The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)
is a genealogical association in the United States founded in 1890. Women 18
years or older who can prove lineal descent from a patriot of the American Revolution,
are eligible for membership. DAR's motto is "God, Home, and Country."
Membership is limited to direct lineal descendants of
soldiers or patriots of the Revolutionary period who aided the cause of
independence including the following:
- Signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence, Oath of Allegiance or Oath of Fidelity and Support (Recognized Patriot)
- Military veterans of the American Revolutionary War (1775/83 and 1812)
- Civil servants of provisional or State governments and Participants in the Boston Tea Party
- Prisoners of war, refugees, and defenders of fortresses and frontiers; and others who gave material or patriotic support to the Revolutionary cause.
As the DAR is a lineage-based organization we were hired to
trace the patriot ancestors for a family that has been in the United States for
hundreds of years. Oral tradition and some documents in the family gave
indication that they qualified for membership but they did not have all the
documents available to demonstrate lineal descent. We specialize in Hispanic
Genealogy but took this assignment to learn about North American genealogy and
test the available document is United States.
The research took only three months and the results were
simply spectacular. The applicant proved to be 11 times “Daughter of the
American Revolution”, descendant of recognized patriots and soldiers that
fought both in the 1775 and the 1812 wars.
The availability of digital records, electronic indexes and
information exchange via genealogical societies allowed going back 7
generations in record time. We can only hope the state of Hispanic genealogical
records will get to this situation sometime in the future. In the meantime we
will continue painstakingly working with old papers and a lot of manual research…
For illustration purposes the genealogical chart from this
11 times daughter of the American Revolution is included below. To protect her privacy, I have kept the names
of the patriots and soldiers, but eliminated the surnames of her other ancestors.
