Daughters of the American Revolution Looking to Grow Their Ranks on Country’s 250th Birthday

MITCHELL, SD (Mitchell Now) — As America celebrates its 250th birthday, an organization with deep ties to the nation’s founding will be looking for new recruits.

The Daughters of the American Revolution – Firesteel Chapter, based in Mitchell, are planning an informational event for July 4th from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Registrar Linda Oster is tasked with doing research to see if someone qualifies for the group. She helps guide people through the digital archives of the DAR’s genealogical library in Washington, D.C.

She says the records are extremely detailed. Oftentimes, they can look up a person’s occupation and the different places they lived, even though centuries have passed. To be a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a woman needs to have a blood relative that helped contribute to the war in some way.

Obviously, a soldier would qualify, but it could be a local politician, a farmer that sold provisions to the Continental Army. Oster notes one local member was accepted because they had a relative who was a paver and helped maintain the roads that made up the army’s supply lines.

The local chapter meets once a month at the Carnegie Research Center, home to the Mitchell Historical Society. They also find ways to regularly contribute to the community through special events that bring history to life. An example is reading the Declaration of Independence at area schools.

Oster says membership is a treasured experience because of the legacy it carries. Being a DAR member is to have a connection to the country’s first veterans, men who shared a battlefield with titans such as General George Washington or Henry Knox, men who made real the vision of the country’s Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Even though South Dakota was not even a territory at the time of the Revolution, the westward expansion has intertwined the state with that transformational era in ways great and small. Oster says most South Dakota chapters have between 25 to 30 members, including the Mitchell area.