Boy Scouts Display Christmas Seals Poster
Photo courtesy of Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware and ALA Web site, www.lungusa.org
Emily P. Bissell & Charles A. Lindbergh First Christmas Seal
Photos courtesy of ALA website, www.lungusa.org
Also in 1947, Joseph Frederick and a worker sitting next to a trench they dug by hand. Frederick started his company with a single truck and a strong work ethic.
This 1947 photograph shows a group of Boy Scouts displaying Christmas Seals™, which Delawarean Emily P. Bissell created in the early 1900s. This is the story of how Bissell created the program and why.
In 1907, tuberculosis was rampant in the United States. To care for the patients, doctors and other caretakers began opening small sanatoriums around the country, including one tiny shack in Delaware located near the Brandywine River.
The little sanatorium near the Brandywine was threatened with closing for the lack of $300 in operating expenses. Dr. Joseph P. Wales, who ran the facility, was horrified and asked his cousin Emily P. Bissell to think of a way to help.
Bissell remembered reading a magazine article about how the Danes had begun to fight tuberculosis by buying stickers to decorate their Christmas letters and packages. The Danes had bought more than 4 million stickers. Bissell decided to see if Americans would buy enough Christmas seals to keep Delaware's sanatorium from closing.
Although many discouraged her, Bissell started her own one-woman campaign to publicize the seals and how donating money would help fight TB. Finally, on December 7, 1907, the first seals were sold at a table in the corridor of the Wilmington post office. The campaign raised more than $3,000.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s and well into the 1940s, Bissell continued to be active as a leader of the Christmas Seals campaign. She appeared with U.S. presidents and other public figures, enlisting their support for Christmas Seals.