The Daughters of the American Revolution is…
October 1890 CE
Te centennial of President George Washington's inauguration had been celebrated in 1889, and Americans look for additional ways to recognize their past.
Out of the renewed interest in United States history, numerous patriotic and preservation societies are founded.
On July 13, 1890, after the Sons of the American Revolution had refused to allow women to join their group, Mary Smith Lockwood published the story of patriot Hannah White Arnett in The Washington Post, asking, "Where will the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution place Hannah Arnett?"
On July 21 of this year, William O. McDowell, a great-grandson of Hannah White Arnett, had published an article in The Washington Post offering to help form a society to be known as the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The first meeting of the society had been held August 9, 1890.
The first DAR chapter is organized on October 11, 1890, at the Strathmore Arms, the home of Mary Smith Lockwood, one of the DAR's four co-founders.
Other founders are Eugenia Washington, a great-grandniece of George Washington, Ellen Hardin Walworth, and Mary Desha.
They had also held organizational meetings in August 1890.
Other attendees in October are Sons of the American Revolution members Registrar General Dr. George Brown Goode, Secretary General A. Howard Clark, William O. McDowell (SAR member #1), Wilson L. Gill (secretary at the inaugural meeting), and eighteen other people.
The First Lady, Caroline Lavina Scott Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison, lends her prestige to the founding of DAR, and serves as its first President General.
Having initiated a renovation of the White House, she is interested in historic preservation.
She helpa establish the goals of DAR, which will be incorporated by congressional charter in 1896.
In this same period, such organizations as the Colonial Dames of America, the Mary Washington Memorial Society, Preservation of the Virginia Antiquities, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Sons of Confederate Veterans are also founded.
This is in addition to numerous fraternal and civic organizations flourishing in this period.
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