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AUBURN — This year, Mary Dillingham-Burnt Meadow Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution, as it is now called since their merger with the Burnt Meadow Chapter of Sabattus in 2015, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. To celebrate this occasion, the DAR Chapter donated $450 to the Androscoggin Historical Society.
When the Sons of the American Revolution voted to exclude women, the DAR was chartered in January 1895, galvanizing a force as determined as that which fought for the American Revolution.
“It must become apparent that if women were to accomplish any distinctive patriotic work, it must be within their own circle, and under their own leadership,” according to co-founder Letitia Green Stevenson.
Accomplish they have, from the DAR Hospital Corps (now the Army Nurse Corps) to local achievements such as founding the Androscoggin Historical Society and the Lewiston Public Library.
The Androscoggin Historical and Antiquarian Society was conceived June 10, 1922, at a meeting of the Mary Dillingham Chapter of the DAR. The meeting was an outing, and the talk turned to preserving historical items owned by the members, as well as needing a place for the valuable collection of Sen. William P. Frye of Lewiston, whose daughters were charter members of the chapter.
This was not idle talk, for at the next meeting, the chapter discussed founding the society and appointed a committee to look into the matter.
“Thus it was,” wrote James Philoon, an early president of the historical society, “that the Daughters of the American Revolution became the Mother of the Society.”
Today, DAR’s mission of historic preservation, education and patriotism is alive and well in Androscoggin County.
