San Diego Chapter
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Chapter History & Information
On December 9, 1910, thirty-three women met in a Hillcrest home and organized the San Diego Chapter, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The new chapter was the first in the county and 19th in the state. There were monthly meetings and annual dues of $2.00. In 1915 the Panama-Pacific Exposition was held in our city. This was our chance to become better known in the community. We opened a Tea Room and welcomed visitors from all over the world, serving cakes, cookies, and tea with DAR china we ordered from Austria. In 1936 we had a hospitality room at the California-Pacific International Exposition (World's Fair). As San Diego grew, so did our membership until new chapters were organized in the county, our chapter sponsoring several of them. We now all belong to California State Society District XIV. What started as a small collection of books on genealogy for members' research has grown to approximately 1,200 volumes, which are on permanent loan to the San Diego Public Library. As fundraisers, we have teas, coffees, picnics, silent auctions, raffles, bake sales. We are proud to support and reward good citizenship, patriotism, American history studies, DAR schools, American Indian causes, conservation programs, and high school & university ROTC. Each year we sponsor a naturalization ceremony for immigrants numbering in the thousands. We offer workshops in lineage research. Since 1920 we have placed 16 bronze markers at historical sites, and are surveying others.
We have rolled bandages, knit sweaters and socks, packaged medical supplies through 2 world wars. We have participated in all Military Order of the World Wars' annual Massing of the Colors in Balboa Park with our own color guard since 1954, the oldest unit in the program. We have always contributed to the Veterans Hospital patients. Now, in this time of peril and conflict, we are focusing on the needs of the USO as families move in and out of the city in active military service.
A more detailed history of San Diego Chapter, written in December 2000 for
its 90th birthday observance, was placed by the DAR Historian General,
Washington, D.C. in the NSDAR Archives Americana collection.
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One of our charter members was a young schoolteacher, Jessie Ball, who
married Alfred I. duPont in 1921, and moved from San Diego to the Nemours Estate in Delaware. She kept her membership in San Diego, and when she died
in 1970, we became eligible (with many other nonprofit organizations) for
grants from the Jessie Ball duPont Foundation. Her legacy has enabled us to
make generous contributions to community projects: YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs,
Scouts, Salvation Army, and particularly, in recent years, for the benefit
of the city's homeless women and children.