Juliette Gordon Low

Juliette Gordon Low's mother's family came from Chicago. Her father William Washington Gordon II was a Confederate Captain in the American Civil War, and a Brigadier General in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. Among her friends and family, Juliette was always called by her nickname "Daisy". The families of Confederate officers were required to leave Savannah after the December 1864 surrender to General William T. Sherman. Four-year-old Daisy went with her mother, Eleanor "Nellie" Kinzie Gordon, and her sisters, six-year-old Eleanor and one-year-old Alice, to the Chicago home of Eleanor's parents, John H. Kinzie and Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie.

Daisy loved to hear the family stories of her great-grandmother, Eleanor Lytle McKillip Kinzie, who had been captured by Native Americans at the age of nine. Even though she was a captive, she was always joyful, so the Native Americans started calling her "Little-Ship-Under-Full-Sail." She was the adopted daughter of the Seneca chief Cornplanter in the years she dwelt with the tribe. Eventually, the Seneca said they would give Eleanor whatever gift she wanted, and she chose to go back home. The Seneca let her go. The shorter version of the nickname was bestowed on Daisy, as she was always jumping into new games, hobbies, and ideas.

Juliette was educated in several prominent boarding schools, including the Virginia Female Institute (now Stuart Hall School); Edgehill School run by Thomas Jefferson's granddaughters, the Misses Randolph; Miss Emmett's School in Morristown, New Jersey; and Mesdemoiselles Charbonniers, a French finishing school in New York City.

When she was about 25 years old, Juliette suffered an ear infection from a piece of rice that was accidentally lodged in her ear at her wedding. She persuaded the doctor to try an experimental treatment, an injection of silver nitrate. This treatment damaged her ear, causing her to lose a great deal of her hearing in that ear.