Saturday, October 31, 2015

Society Saturday - Columbus Day in Washington DC

It was a beautiful day to celebrate the 523 anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" of the new world.  The National Society Children of the American Colonists, along with several other hereditary and patriotic societies took part in the annual ceremony at Columbus Circle in Washington DC.  


There were representatives from Spain, Italy, and the Bahamas who spoke.  The national winner of the DAR Christopher Columbus essay read his essay, then we all processed with our wreaths.



I was joined by the National 2nd Vice President as we carried our wreath to the front of the stage.  The wreath was a little top heavy, and attracted bees, but we managed a dignified walk in spite of it.




Saturday, October 24, 2015

Society Saturday - Daughters in Dearborn

The October Board meeting of the Daughters of Founders and Patriots was hosted by the Michigan Chapter in Dearborn, MI.  This is a suburb of Detroit, and the home of Henry Ford. 

The Michigan ladies were gracious hostesses supplying us with all-Michigan-made products for our meet and greet in the evening.  We enjoyed pasties, bumpy cake, Better Made chips and Rainbow chips - washed down with Vernor's and Faygo soft drinks.  For dessert we had Michigan-grown apples with caramel sauce made in Michigan.

The highlight of our Board meeting is the day spent seeing all the local sights.  This year we toured the Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village.  The museum has a lot of old cars, trains and airplanes, along with other "modern" conveniences.

The Village consists of many historic buildings that have been moved or reconstructed. We had a ride pass, so we enjoyed the turn of the century transportation -

the horsedrawn carriage



 the model T



the steam train


and for fun, the carousel




We enjoyed lunch at the Eagle Tavern and were met by the Tavern owner prior to enjoying family style food.   After lunch we chatted with a travelling salesman before touring the village.

Some of us were feeling energetic enough to turn the train at the roundhouse.



One stop was at the 1917 factory where we had the opportunity to make our own brass candlesticks with their steam-powered lathe.





The next day was our Board meeting.  Our lunch speaker after the meeting was Robert Kreipke, the Corporate Historian for Ford Motor Company.  He told us many tidbits about the company, from its founding, to its historic vehicles, to some of the other ventures such as shipbuilding and airplane building.



Saturday, October 17, 2015

Society Saturday - DAR National Day of Service

I have really fallen behind in my blogging - these next few posts may be a little out of order, but I will catch up by the end of the year...

Sunday, October 11, 2015 was the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.  To celebrate, DAR declared that this was to be a National Day of Service, in keeping with one of our founding principles.

They asked that every chapter take part in some sort of a service project.

The Isle a la Cache chapter chose a genealogical and historic preservation project in Bolingbrook.  The Bolingbrook Historic Preservation Commission has shoeboxes full of index cards with references to early Bolingbrook residents.  Our project was to match those references with people who are buried in the 2 Bolingbrook cemeteries.  Once matched, the information was added to BillionGraves.com.  This will help anyone who is researching those people by providing additional resources for them.  And BillionGraves is much easier to research online than traveling to the Bolingbrook library and looking through the index cards. 




We all worked on laptops to upload the information and finished several letters of the alphabet before we had to go.