General Davie Chapter DAR

09/03/2026

09/01/2026

On this day in 1773, Phillis Wheatley becomes the first black American to have a book of poetry published.

Very little is known about Phillis Wheatley’s early life—not even her name at birth. She was born somewhere in Africa before falling victim to the slave trade: As a young girl, she was apparently kidnapped and taken to Boston.

By the time the ship arrived in the colonies, the slave trader had decided that Phillis was sickly and frail. He sold her for a “trifle” to a respected businessman named John Wheatley. His wife, Susanna, passed over stronger girls because she was said to be taken by the “humble and modest demeanor and the interesting features of the little stranger.”

Wheatley and his wife gave Phillis her new name. She was named after the ship that had carried her to the colonies.

A constant reminder of being kidnapped? Really not great.

The bad part of the story is that the Wheatleys felt comfortable purchasing Phillis. But the good part is that they soon noticed that Phillis was smart and wanted to learn. They’d purchased her because they’d wanted a young girl to help around the house. In the end, however, housework wasn’t really her focus. Instead, the Wheatleys’ daughter began tutoring Phillis, teaching her to read and write.

Phillis worked hard, and she learned a lot! As a teenager, she began writing poetry. Her first poem was published in a newspaper in 1767.

Her big break came in the early 1770s. Phillis had published an elegy for the Reverend George Whitefield. That elegy was seen by Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon. The Countess was a well-known philanthropist, and she aided the Wheatleys’ efforts to have Phillis’s book published.

A few years later, Phillis wrote another memorable poem. The Revolution had just begun, and Phillis’s poem praised George Washington:

“Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.”

Washington saw the poem in late 1775, and he wrote Phillis in February 1776. He apologized to Phillis for his delay in responding, thanking her for the “polite notice of me” and for the “elegant Lines.” “[H]owever undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick,” he added, “the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents.” He invited her to visit him at his camp outside Boston.

“She passed half an hour with the commander-in-chief, from whom and his officers she received marked attention,” historian Benson J. Lossing reports in The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution.

What a scene that must have been! The Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, then still a slave owner, meeting with a black American female author.

Washington would eventually free his slaves. Surely this incident, and others like it, prompted him toward that decision? “Few incidents in the early days of the war,” Washington biographer Ron Chernow writes, “suggest how powerfully Revolutionary ideals were transforming George Washington as his reaction to Phillis Wheatley.”

After the Wheatleys passed away, Phillis married a freeman, John Peters. Finances were strained for the couple, and Phillis, by then a freed former slave, ended up becoming a servant. She unfortunately passed away at a young age in 1784.

Perhaps Phillis would most want to be remembered for one of her final poems, written during the last year of her life? It was a poem about the new American country, titled “Liberty and Peace.”

“Auspicious Heaven shall fill with fav’ring Gales,
Where e’er Columbia spreads her swelling Sails:
To every Realm shall Peace her Charms display,
And Heavenly Freedom spread her golden Ray.”

08/30/2026

Trivia questions:

(1) QUESTION: Which Presidents got married to their wives in London? [Hint: Yes, there was more than one.]

ANSWER: John Quincy Adams & Teddy Roosevelt.

** Adams spent many years as an American emissary overseas. During that time, he met and married Louisa Catherine Johnson, the daughter of a United States consul. They married in London in 1797.

** Roosevelt had been a widower for nearly three years when he married Edith Kermit Carow. The two had known each other for years! Edith grew up down the street from him and the two were friends. Some even speculate that Teddy proposed to Edith but was rejected while he was a student at Harvard College. Either way, Teddy ended up marrying Alice Hathaway Lee, who subsequently died a few days after giving birth to their first child. Teddy was devastated. Eventually, though, he resumed his friendship with Edith and the two became secretly engaged. In the year before their wedding, Edith had moved to London to help her mother and sister set up a residence. Teddy later followed her. They were married in London in late 1886.



(2) QUESTION: How many Presidents have been married more than once?

ANSWER: Eight. John Tyler (widowed; remarried); Millard Fillmore (widowed; remarried); Benjamin Harrison (widowed; remarried); Teddy Roosevelt (widowed; remarried); Woodrow Wilson (widowed; remarried); Ronald Reagan (divorced; remarried); Donald Trump (divorced twice; remarried); Joe Biden (widowed; remarried).



(3) QUESTION: Which President(s) got married in a White House ceremony?

ANSWER: Grover Cleveland. He married Frances Folsom in the Blue Room of the White House. She was 21 years old at the time! Two other Presidents, John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson, got married while they were still serving in the White House, but their ceremonies were held elsewhere.

08/28/2026

🚂🇺🇸 All aboard for America250! 🇺🇸🚂

Look who’s getting dressed up for the 250th! The North Carolina Department of Transportation unveiled its brand-new America250 locomotive and it’s ready to roll into history!

EMD F59PH No. 1776 will be pulling Amtrak/NCDOT passenger trains along the Piedmont Corridor between Charlotte and Raleigh while celebrating 250 years of American history! 🇺🇸

08/25/2026

On this day in 1814, a fire rages through Washington, D.C. Our country was then still in the grips of its second war against Great Britain. The British had marched upon and attacked our capital.

You may remember these events because the British occupation of D.C. during the War of 1812 prompted First Lady Dolley Madison to flee the White House with a portrait of George Washington. But did you know that a sudden, violent storm—perhaps coupled with a tornado—may have saved the city on this day so long ago?

“[T]he British sacked the District of Columbia,” Rob Crotty writes for the National Archives. “They were, in turn, sacked by a tornado.”

Or was it the other way around? At least one officer thought the storm hurt Americans more than the British.

“Great God, Madam!” a British Admiral allegedly said to a lady in Washington as the storm hit. “Is this the kind of storm to which you are accustomed in this infernal country?” The lady responded: “No, Sir, this is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city.” The admiral disagreed: “Not so Madam. It is rather to aid your enemies in the destruction of your city.”

The British were having a tough time of it, though. True, they’d managed to enjoy a festive meal at the presidential mansion on the night of August 24, just before they set that building ablaze. But they’d also suffered when British soldiers tried to throw 130 barrels of American gunpowder down a well. A stray spark had set off a huge explosion, leaving dozens of British soldiers dead and wounded.

The British set fire to public buildings such as the U.S. Treasury, the Capitol, and its Library of Congress. To their credit, they were convinced to leave the Patent Office untouched because so many of its items were considered private, not public, property.

The fires blazed through the night of August 24 and were still going when the sun rose on August 25. For a time, it must have seemed that the fires would destroy everything.

That’s when the storm hit.

“[T]he sky grew suddenly dark, and the most tremendous hurricane, ever remembered by the oldest inhabitant in the place, came on,” one British soldier wrote. He thought it “impossible for one who was not an eye-witness” to understand the strength of the wind. “Roofs of houses were torn off by it,” he described, “and whirled into the air like sheets of paper . . . . together with the noise of the wind and the thunder, the crash of falling buildings, and the tearing of roofs as they were stript from the walls, produced the most appalling effect I ever have, and probably ever shall, witness.”

Houses were picked up, and trees uprooted. The British had shown mercy to the Patent Office, but now its roof was torn off. Cannons were picked up like rag dolls and thrown around, taking out those in its path. The chain bridge across the Potomac was rendered useless. British soldiers lay flat on their faces in the street, not knowing where else to take cover from the ferocious wind.

The storm lasted for hours. But would things have been better or worse without it? True, the flames were finally extinguished, but now buildings lost roofs and chimneys. Walls cracked under the pressure as hot flames clashed with cold rain. Many were killed.

The British left that same night, “the general devastation being completed,” as one officer concluded. The confusion created by the storm covered their departure.

The British occupation of D.C. had lasted just over 24 hours. It was both the first and the last time that a foreign army would ever occupy our capital.

08/23/2026

For those who saw the presidential trivia questions earlier:



(1) QUESTION: Which President’s wife was the first to be called “First Lady”?

ANSWER: The answer is more complicated than you might think. Dolley Madison was generally called Lady Madison when she was serving as a hostess for President James Madison, but some reports indicate that President Zachary Taylor eulogized her as “first lady of our land” when she passed away. (No precise transcript of the eulogy exists.) A few decades later, Harriet Lane, the niece of James Buchanan, was referred to as “First Lady” by a newspaper. Lane was occupying an unusual role: She was White House hostess for the President because he did not have a wife. The next White House hostess WAS the wife of a President, of course. Mary Todd Lincoln was called “First Lady” by the press sometimes, but the title still wasn’t common. It wasn’t until the time of Lucy Hayes (1877) that the President’s wife began to be called First Lady on a more consistent basis.



(2) QUESTION: In what year did residents of Washington, D.C. finally get the right to vote in presidential elections?

ANSWER: 1961. In that year, the 23rd Amendment was ratified. That amendment gave the District of Columbia at least three electors, as if it were a state. Before that time, the residents of Washington, D.C. did not vote in presidential elections. They voted for the first time in the election of 1964, helping to push LBJ to victory.



(3) QUESTION: Which First Lady kept a pet raccoon?

ANSWER: Grace Coolidge. The raccoon’s name was Rebecca, and it made an appearance at the White House Easter Egg roll in 1927, to the great delight of the children attending that year.

08/21/2026

As our own Chapter’s Second Vice-Regent, Dottie Dudley portrays Mrs. Dolley Madison to chapters around Dolley’s birth state of North Carolina, it’s always nice to learn something new!

On this day in 1814, Dolley and James Madison prepare for the worst. The War of 1812 is raging: British troops had landed in Maryland, potentially advancing against Washington, D.C.

They were moving against an American flotilla, James Monroe reported on August 21, or perhaps “taking that [flotilla] in their way and aiming at the City.”

The report he sent the next day proved even more ominous.

“The enemy are in full march for Washington,” Monroe wrote. “Have the materials prepared to destroy the bridges.” His postscript surely made Madison’s heart sink: “You had better remove the records.”

Madison was on it. “The papers of all the Offices are under way to retired places,” his return letter noted. Madison departed to meet with his generals in the field, even as Dolley remained behind.

“He enquired anxiously,” Dolley wrote her sister, “whether I had courage, or firmness to remain in the President’s house until his return . . . on my assurance that I had no fear but for him and the success of our army, he left me, beseeching me to take care of myself, and of the cabinet papers, public and private.”

The situation continued to deteriorate. Madison soon wrote Dolley that she should be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.

“I am accordingly ready,” Dolley wrote. “I have pressed as many cabinet papers into trunks as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed . . . .”

She may have saved some cabinet papers, but she is most famous for saving a full-length portrait of George Washington that had been hanging in the White House.

Here’s what she didn’t know: The portrait was a copy of the original Gilbert Stuart painting. Even more interesting? If she had known to look for it, she would have been able to tell that it was only a copy: The word “United States” is deliberately misspelled “United Sates” on a book in the painting, for this very purpose.

Saving the portrait was harder than it might sound. “Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure,” Dolley explained to her sister, “and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out;—it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping.”

As she prepared to leave, Dolley’s letter to her sister concluded: “And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it . . . . When I shall again write you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!”

The British arrived not too long after Dolley left. They feasted in the White House, using the presidential silverware and china. Then they set fire to the building and abandoned the city.

The British had burned our capital, but their victory was short-lived: They would ultimately fail to defeat the young United States in a conflict that had felt like a second war for independence to many Americans.

P.S. Historians have long used Dolley’s letter as evidence for these events, but recent evidence suggests that the letter was not written in the midst of the escape, as originally thought. Dolley may have reconstructed events at a later date. “While the primary elements and facts of the letter are not disputed, the tone may have changed considerably, and it does pose interesting questions for students of history about what makes a document an original,” the White House Historical Association concludes.

08/18/2026

On this day in 1920, the 19th amendment is formally ratified, guaranteeing that women cannot be denied the right to vote based on their gender.

The battle for women’s suffrage was long and hard-fought.

Suffragettes began their battle as early as the mid-1800s, but an amendment protecting women’s voting rights was not approved by Congress until 1919. The states completed ratification on August 18, 1920, and the U.S. Secretary of State declared the amendment effective on August 26.

Our country was then just over 140 years old. What took so long?

Our founding generation is often criticized for this delay, as you know—and it is similarly castigated for allowing slavery to persist. Yet such a perspective fails to understand the world as it was experienced by our Founders in the late 1700s.

The Founders lived in a world where the King could boss his subjects around in all sorts of ways that we find unimaginable today. Religious freedom was a novelty. Women weren’t just treated unequally in America—they were treated badly everywhere. Likewise, slavery was a global problem, not a specifically American one.

In the face of all these injustices, our founding generation made an unbelievably bold decision. The first step towards change is always the hardest, but our Founders did it: They stood up to the British King. They sought respect for the inherent, unalienable rights of “We the People,” which had gone ignored for so long. They took that monumental first step towards liberty.

The struggle for liberty is not a sprint. It’s more like an endless marathon. Modern Americans too often forget this important point—but the Founders would have understood it.

We do our Founders a grave injustice when we castigate them because they couldn’t run every leg of a long marathon in just their own short lifetimes, at least in this author’s opinion. The Founders did what they could: The ran the first leg of the race, then they passed the baton to the next generation.

The first leg of this particular marathon was no joke. Our Founders broke free from England. They lost husbands, sons, wives, and mothers. They sacrificed their livelihoods and property. They took risks that could get them hanged for treason.

Indeed, some were hanged for treason.

In the end, they won an impossible victory. But they weren’t done yet.

During the long, hot summer of 1787, fifty-five men gathered in Philadelphia. They were learned men, students of history. They had studied various political systems, and they sought to create something better than any of the failed democracies of the past.

They created our Constitution, and they understood it to be one big experiment in the preservation of liberty.

“[T]he preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government,” George Washington said, “are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

Liberty has flourished under the American experiment in self-governance because each generation of Americans completes its own leg of the marathon, then passes the baton to the next generation.

The task before this generation of Americans isn’t to criticize the Founders endlessly. Instead, we should ask ourselves: Are we living up to our heritage? Are we carrying the baton of liberty forward? The answer to these questions must always be “yes.”

It’s our turn. We have the watch.

God bless this great country of ours!

08/17/2026

Applications are now open for the 2026–2027 DAR Historic Preservation Grants! 🏛️

Each year, the DAR provides funding to chapters and local nonprofits working to preserve historic sites, safeguard documents, and protect cultural treasures in communities across the country.

One recent recipient: The historic Harrisville Train Depot was built in 1901 and is one of few remaining passenger train depots in Michigan’s Northern Lower Peninsula. Situated within viewing distance of Lake Huron, and alongside a working rail line, it’s a true forgotten treasure tucked away within the City of Harrisville. The depot is constructed of locally sourced cut limestone and was designed by esteemed architects in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. At 125 years old, the Depot's cut stone building is vulnerable to weather damage and other issues. This grant allowed the Friends of the Harrisville Train Depot to stabilize the roof structure and complete strategic interior work which was a key priority to bring the structure to baseline preservation before further damage was incurred.

Learn more about DAR Historic Preservation Grants and how to apply here:🔗 www.dar.org/grants