DAR press release
The Sarah Maples Chapter welcomed Jane Doclar as our speaker on Oct. 15, 2014. Jane spoke of the foundling members of DAR. In the 1790’s there existed a group that called themselves Sons of the Revolution. They allowed women to attend their meetings until they decide to go national then they excluded women (big mistake). Mary Smith Lockwood fired off an editorial in the local papers deploring what the Sons had done. She wrote, “Were there not mothers of the Revolution? Were there not wives of the Revolution?” From then on she was known as the Pen Mother and her National # 27 will never be given out to anyone else. Whenever a member is given a number it will always be their number. She created the guidelines for membership that we go by today.
William O. McDowell urged the women to organize their own organization. Their first meeting consisted of 18 women, including the original four who are known as our foundling mothers and they chose as their first leader Caroline Scott Harrison, who was the wife of President Benjamin Harrison. Her National # is 7. She was not able to attend a lot of the meetings because of her duties as First Lady of the United States. She was a gifted artist who painted on china. She painted a lot of orchids.
Ellen Hardin Walworth was a lawyer and she was known as the Mother of our magazine. She believed that the members should be informed of what the organization was doing and her National # is 5. She also saw the need for DAR to have their own building to keep all the paper work that they generated. She started the penny box that members could drop their pennies into and that was the beginning of their fund raising to buy property for their own building. Today that building holds 200,000 thousand volumes and 25,000 files of genealogy records.
Mary Desha was # 4 and she worked to established committees. She wanted a society based on service and to adhere to the Constitution and Historic Preservation.
Eugenia Washington, her # is 1 She felt the need for well kept records
Jane Doclar was born in New Orleans, La and reared in Clovis, N.M. She has also lived in North Brunswick, N.J. and presently lives in Grapevine. She is married to Ernest Doclar, who is the Editor of Scouting Magazine, Boy Scouts of America. She is the mother of three daughters and the grandmother of 7 grandchildren. She is a member of St. Francis Assisi Catholic Church. She became a DAR member in 1985. She has served on many State Chairmanships and is currently serving as State Chairman of Membership in the administration of Pamela Wright. She has many more credits volunteering for lots of organizations and she has also had the honor as being named as Outstanding Teacher.