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The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America | |
Abbreviation | NSCDA |
---|---|
Founded | April 8, 1891 |
Type | Non-profit, lineage society |
Focus | Historic preservation, education, patriotism |
Headquarters | Dumbarton House |
Membership | 15,000[ citation needed ] |
none, Edith Laurencin (Acting Director) | |
Publication | Dames in Uniform |
Website | nscda |
The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) is an American organization composed of women who are descended from an ancestor "who came to reside in an American Colony before 1776, and whose services were rendered during the Colonial Period." The organization has 44 corporate societies. The national headquarters is Dumbarton House in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Edith Laurencin is the acting director since Carol Cadou's departure.
The organization was founded in 1891, shortly after the founding of a similar society, the Colonial Dames of America (CDA), which was created to have a centrally organized structure under the control of the parent Society in New York City.
The NSCDA was intended as a federation of State Societies in which each unit had a degree of autonomy. [1] Another society formed around the same time was the Daughters of the American Revolution. Organized following the United States Centennial of 1876 and a Centennial of the US Constitution in New York in 1889, the NSCDA has worked in historic preservation, restoration and the interpretation of historic sites since its New York Society first undertook the preservation of the Van Cortlandt House in 1897.
The organization includes 44 corporate societies. Its headquarters is located at Dumbarton House, in Washington, D.C. In addition to its activities in museum work, the Society sponsors scholarship programs and other historic preservation, patriotic service and educational projects. Historic house museums owned or operated by the NSCDA include:
The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a patriot of the American Revolutionary War. A non-profit group, the organization promotes education and patriotism. Its membership is limited to direct lineal descendants of soldiers or others of the American Revolution era who aided the revolution and its subsequent war. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and have a birth certificate indicating that their gender is female. DAR has over 190,000 current members in the United States and other countries. The organization's motto was originally "Home and Country" until the twentieth century, when it was changed to "God, Home, and Country".
Dumbarton House is a Federal style house located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was completed around 1800. Its first occupant was Joseph Nourse, the first Register of the Treasury. Dumbarton House, a federal period historic house museum, stands on approximately an acre of gardens on the northern edge of Georgetown, District of Columbia. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Displaying a fine collection of period decorative arts, it gives the visitor a concrete sense of a substantial private residence in the early 1800s. Constructed in 1798–99, the house was a private residence until The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) purchased it for its headquarters in 1928 and gave it the name it has today. In addition to meeting its administrative needs, the NSCDA wanted to illustrate domestic life in Georgetown in the early federal period. To achieve this, its two principal floors were opened to the public as a house museum in 1932, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington.
Louise Evelina du Pont Crowninshield was an American heiress, historic preservationist, and philanthropist. She was the great-granddaughter of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Her estate at Eleutherian Mills near Wilmington, Delaware, became the Hagley Museum and Library in 1957.
The Colonial Dames of America (CDA) is an American organization comprising women who descend from one or more ancestors who lived in British North America between 1607 and 1775, and who aided the colonies in public office, in military service, or in another acceptable capacity. The CDA is listed as an approved lineage society with the Hereditary Society Community of the United States of America.
The Betts House, built in 1804, is the oldest surviving building in Cincinnati, and the oldest brick home in Ohio. This survivor of Cincinnati's period of settlement offers exhibits and programs that focus on Cincinnati history, historic preservation, and the built environment. In addition to being a house museum, the Betts House is also the headquarters of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio.
A historic house museum is a house of historic significance that is preserved as a museum. Historic furnishings may be displayed in a way that reflects their original placement and usage in a home. Historic house museums are held to a variety of standards, including those of the International Council of Museums. Houses are transformed into museums for a number of different reasons. For example, the homes of famous writers are frequently turned into writer's home museums to support literary tourism.
The Whitehall Museum House is the farmhouse modified by Dean George Berkeley, when he lived in the northern section of Newport, Rhode Island that comprises present-day Middletown in 1729–1731, while working to open his planned St Paul's College on Bermuda. It is also known as Berkeley House or Bishop George Berkeley House and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The Neill–Cochran House Museum is a historic home in north-central Austin, Texas. Master builder Abner Cook designed and built the house in 1855 as a suburban estate many years before the surrounding area was settled by other homes and businesses. The two-story Greek Revival home features prominent Doric columns and Mr. Cook's signature "sheaf of wheat" balusters.
The Dorothy Quincy Homestead is a US National Historic Landmark at 34 Butler Road in Quincy, Massachusetts. The house was originally built by Edmund Quincy II in 1686 who had an extensive property upon which there were multiple buildings. Today, the site consists of the Dorothy Quincy Homestead, which has been preserved as a museum and is open occasionally to the public.
Jamestowne Society is an organization founded in 1936 by George Craghead Gregory for descendants of stockholders in the Virginia Company of London and the descendants of those who owned land or who had domiciles in Jamestown or on Jamestown Island prior to the year 1700.
Amandus Johnson was a Swedish- American historian, author and museum director. He is most associated with his epic two volume history The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638-1664, which was also published in Swedish as Den första svenska kolonien i Amerika (1923).
History Colorado is a historical society that was established in 1879 as the State Historical Society of Colorado, also known as the Colorado Historical Society. History Colorado is a 501(c)(3) organization and an agency of the State of Colorado under the Department of Higher Education.
Old First Presbyterian Church of Wilmington is a historic Presbyterian church located on West Street on Brandywine Park Drive in Wilmington, New Castle County, Delaware.
Built in 1770, the Burgwin-Wright House is the only structure in Wilmington, North Carolina, from the colonial era open to the public. Built for merchant, planter and government official John Burgwin, all rooms are furnished with 18th and 19th century antiques and showcase hundreds of objects. Built on the original walls of a former city jail, c. 1744, the house retains many vestiges of its previous incarnation such as outdoor and sub-basement jail cells and a freestanding kitchen house with a massive hearth. Occupying two acres, the colonial style gardens consist of seven distinct areas, including an orchard with pomegranate and fig trees, a kitchen garden and a rose garden.
The Hotel de Paris is an historic hotel and museum located in the town of Georgetown, Colorado. The building stands on 6th Street, across from Georgetown Town Hall, in the eastern end of the town. Originally opened in 1875 by French immigrant Louis Dupuy, the hotel became famous for its luxury and the high-class French cuisine offered to visitors, at the height of the Colorado Silver Boom in Georgetown and the Mountain West. The museum is a popular tourist attraction, known for its well-preserved interiors containing over 5,000 items from the Victorian era, 90% of which are original to the Dupuy era. It was purchased in 1954 by the Colorado chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, which have operated it as a museum ever since.
Mary Hilliard Hinton was an American painter, historian, clubwoman, and political activist. She was a leader in North Carolina's anti-suffragist movement and an outspoken white supremacist, co-founding and running North Carolina's branches of the States Rights Defense League and the Southern Rejection League. A prominent clubwoman, Hinton was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Colonial Dames of America, and the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America; serving as a booklet editor, artist, registrar, and state regent for the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Carol Borchert Cadou is an American museum curator and administrator who served as the former executive director of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America, running the society's headquarters at Dumbarton House in Washington, D.C.
Mary Martha Presley Merritt was an American politician and civic leader. She served two terms in the West Virginia House of Delegates and was named West Virginia's Outstanding Woman Legislator by the Eagleton Institute of Politics in 1972. Merritt went on to serve as vice president and president of the West Virginia Board of Education and as the Worker's Compensation Commissioner.
Presley McDonald Merritt Wagoner is an American clubwoman who served as the President General of the Daughters of the American Revolution from 2005 to 2007.