I’m considering the idea but wondering how much work it will involve, if it’s likely something I can do in my spare times some weekend, or will require multiple trips looking up stuff in obscure county courthouses all over the country.
In the 1860s the family moved to Wisconsin, where record keeping was more lax, but they do seem to be recorded in something called the “Wisconsin Births and Christening Index”, which is apparently only viewable in person at the mormon family history centers. . A copy of the family tree was created on paper in 1927, apparently because someone was interested in joining DAR, and matches what I put together independently with Ancestry.com
They do want a good paper trail. My grandfather’s sister was in the DAR (and I have much of her paperwork) so you would think I would be a cinch to get in the men’s organization. But my mother’s birth certificate cannot be found. It appears to have never been filed by the hospital. And no notice in the local paper. So I’m stuck.
Among my great aunt’s papers were several letters back and forth to various army offices to positively confirm the soldier as the one in our family. Possibly due to similar names of the soldiers.
I am directly descended from eleven Mayflower passengers (and another guy who literally missed the boat), but it would pretty much be impossible for me to give the Mayflower Society what they want to let me join. They want birth certificates and marriage licenses for every generation. I can’t even get these things for my grandparents.
There are books, such as this one, but if you want to use them as documentation, you have to submit a copy of each relevant page with your application.
I thought that the Society would help with early documentation so that each applicant didn’t have to submit documentation that had already been submitted hundreds of times, but they seem to be much more interested in keeping people out than letting people in.
I could, but I doubt if I will. My clue was my great-grandmother writing on a small piece of paper, “My mother’s mother [who I knew as Anne/Anna] was a Peabody. Her mother was a Fitch.” And there was a story about Anna hiding in a hollow log with her baby brother from the redcoats in Connecticut during the revolution. That was all I needed to trace to Aaron Peabody/Paybody, who married Lucy Fitch. From Aaron (whose ggg-grandfather was John Alden) on back, the records seem to be “common knowledge” (as my geometry teacher used to say). Finding primary documents for the six generations between Aaron and I…not likely.
Is the DAR database still searchable for free? About 20 years go I did free on-line searches, showing my direct ancestor as eligible* for DAR (and also providing genealogical info on various distant cousins). I am ineligible for DAR(!) but had my sister or daughter wanted to apply all they would have needed is to document descent from the already-certified DAR line. (* The wording may be confusing. My ancestor didn’t join DAR but some of her sisters did.)
I don’t remember how I accessed that DAR database; all I remember is that it went away, presumably replaced with some pay-to-view option. What is the cheapest way to view the DAR synopses now? Is it included in the Ancestry basic package?
I’m another who could, but won’t. My great grandmother was a DAR member, and I have enough documentation to apply to the SAR and also the Mayflower Society and some other blue-blood organizations, I’m sure. I just don’t care enough about it to do so.
Add me to the “could, but won’t bother” group. I’ve got a clear, traceable line back to a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The works been done. But I haven’t seen that these groups do much of anything beneficial, other than puff up their own sense of importance, although DAR does provide some scholorships.
My mother was in the DAR and in fact was an officer in the state organization, so I assume I could also get in. But, why? On the whole I am not a joiner. If I thought it would do me some good I might bother, but I don’t think it would.
PS do I have any cousins here? One of the people I can trace my ancestry back to is Mercy Twinings, who came over on a Mayflower but not THE Mayflower, apparently. Anybody else here a descendant of Mercy Twinings?