Interviewer - The Unitarian Church is the one where the leaders meet and that's where the first Girl Scout troop in Chelmsford met.

Jane Drury - Because they were the Sunday school group of that church. And is it okay now? Okay.

And Esther, oh dear, Dane, later Woodward, was their Sunday school teacher. And they met, their Sunday school met downstairs in the church because the addition wasn't built yet and that's where the Sunday school classes met. And they continued after the Scout troop got going, they eventually moved over to the town hall because there was more room.

At first it was small, so it was okay, but then eventually they did move over. You had some questions before we get to...

Interviewer - Okay. Heather? Sam.

Oh, Sam used to ask these questions. Okay. They're asking you about three different Girl Scouts, one of them being Eleanor, one of them being the Pages, and you.

Jane Drury - Okay. Well, I'm not going to be too good on Helen Page, but... Okay.

Interviewer - How did you meet Eleanor?

Jane Drury - Eleanor. Eleanor. That's a hard question.

I really don't remember. Probably in the Historical Society. I can only guess at that.

We've known each other for so long. And then when I found out that Troop One was met at the church and was part of the church that I go to, I started asking Eleanor questions and it all went from there. And she knew that I was very interested in it and in local history.

So when she died, her house was full of books, papers. It never got cleaned out until she died. And she left me all her papers and pictures.

And so I spent, oh, about two, three years going through all her papers and I separated out the Girl Scout things at that time. So that's where a lot of this information came from. From her alive and then after her death.

Interviewer - And I'm going to be borrowing back that scrapbook this week and I'm going to start scanning it and putting it on a CD. What was Eleanor like? Like her personality?

Jane Drury - Oh, dear. How did I answer that question? She was a very intelligent person.

As editor eventually of the Newsweekly, one of the, she had to be.

Interviewer - The Chelmsford Independent?

Jane Drury - That, the Newsweekly was bought out by the Independent.

Interviewer - Oh, okay. All right.

Jane Drury - And so when that, after that happened, she wasn't as active. She still wrote articles, but she wasn't as thoroughly, deeply active in the Independent as she was the Newsweekly. And she was good friends with Mr. Krasnicki who owned the Newsweekly. Yeah, it was, how did I, what was she like? As a college student and graduate student, she studied social work and she did work for a while in, with social work. So that all sort of carried through her personality.

Interviewer - Well, was she someone that you would say to walk down the street and say, hello, how are you?

Jane Drury - Oh, absolutely.

Interviewer - And she would check in with everybody and involved, and obviously involved in the town.

Jane Drury - Well, she had a, she didn't walk around the town much.

Interviewer - No.

Jane Drury - She had a car, which I don't remember well enough now to describe it, but it was pretty well known around town. So you knew that was Eleanor buzzing around in her old car.

Interviewer - Okay. How long did you know Eleanor?

Jane Drury - Oh, probably from, oh, 1970s, 60s, 1960s up until she died.

Interviewer - And she died in, the girls missed that answer, that she died in 2000?

Jane Drury - June 18th, 2000. And she, I knew that ahead of time that she was leaving me a lot of pictures. And so I was, there were some pictures which needed identification, more information on, or Girl Scout information I wanted.

So while she was sick, she died of cancer over in the nursing home. And so I would go over about every week and talk with her and get more information and so on. And I was all set to do that again.

I went back the next week and she had moved to the hospital and died the next day. So yes, our friendship did go right up until her death.

Interviewer - What was Eleanor's hobbies and her careers?

Jane Drury - Well, I think I'm pretty well, she was, hobbies, I really can't say.

Interviewer - Well, she was a member of the Historical Society in town.

Jane Drury - I believe so.

Interviewer - Yeah, that's what, that's what I found.

Jane Drury - Yeah, but she was interested in things historical. She would write articles about history. She had inherited her uncle's, I think, glass plate negatives.

Interviewer - Do you girls know what those are? You know how film is? What film is?

The negatives are film. Before that, they developed film onto glass. Okay, now we have, it goes directly to the CD, a chip, a computer chip.

So she inherited these glass plates.

Jane Drury - Yes, and there were over 300 of them, which the Historical Society now has. But they came to me first and I handed them over after I'd gone through and my husband made copies of them and so on.

Interviewer - So those would have been early pictures of the town?

Jane Drury - Houses, people, animals, wildflowers. So was Eleanor a leader in a troop? She was active.

I don't know if she was actually a leader. She became a first lieutenant.

Interviewer - Which would have been an assistant troop leader.

Jane Drury - Well, it was right under the troop leader, but she was still an older girl.

Interviewer - We have her membership cards for 10 years.

Jane Drury - Yeah. When she was 18, she became a lieutenant.

Interviewer - Which would have been 27, 28.

Jane Drury - And about 1925, she joined the Drum and Bugle Corps in Lowell. Lowell had just formed this Drum and Bugle Corps. And so several of the Chelmsfordgirls were invited in, as she was.

Her family, her father and so on, Louie Cornet, I believe. And so she probably drums, bugles, and cymbals. I suspect, but I don't know.

She probably played bugle.

Interviewer - We have pictures of her playing bugle. She played the bugle for two years, according to her badges. See?

Yeah. What you missed was that there's a booklet all about her notes for all the badge work she did.

Jane Drury - Or a lot, a lot.

Interviewer - A little black three-ring binder notebook that I will try to find.

Jane Drury - About the size of this book.

Interviewer - That we didn't see when we were there. So we want to try to get a hold of that, so we can find out information about what parts of the badge she actually earned. Because one of the badges, the bugle, was not online.

Oh, okay.

Jane Drury - Well, the bugle, she wouldn't have been getting a badge for. Unless it was, if she got the musician's badge.

Interviewer - Yeah, it was the musician's badge. So bugle on an instrument? No, there was a bugle one with two stripes on it.

Yeah, there was instrument badges, like individual. There was like bugle drums. Yeah, okay.

They actually know quite a bit about, they were looking at the requirements from the book. Because Heather was looking those up. Good.

Are there any other questions about Eleanor now?

Jane Drury - No.

Interviewer - Okay.

Jane Drury - So you have her book, so you know the date she passed her tenderfoot test in her first class and second class?

Interviewer - Um, no, we don't.

Jane Drury - Okay, she passed her tenderfoot test in April of 1919.

Interviewer - Tenderfoot is your first level of scouting.

Jane Drury - Okay. Yeah, when you come in, you're tenderfoot.

Interviewer - So, and you have to pass a test for that?

Jane Drury - Yes, at that time. Not when I was a tenderfoot. Well, I mean written test.

And when we had to pass tests, yes

. Interviewer - This is because Girl Scouts was based on Boy Scouts, and Boy Scouts had tests for each level. Girl Scouts no longer have tests for levels. But if you look at, if you meet a Boy Scout, they have tests for levels.

Jane Drury - And a lot of their, the cap uniform they have, it's not surprising, because Troop One started when World War I was going. And Fort Devens was nearby.