El Redondo Chapter, NSDAR

08/24/2026

Spotlight: Highland Cemetery, Lawton, Oklahoma
The city of Lawton, seat of Comanche County, is located in southwestern Oklahoma. Lawton has made a burials database for Highland Cemetery available on its website. More than ninety percent of the 16,000 monuments in the cemetery have been photographed and uploaded. The database can be searched by first and/or last name. In addition to a gravestone photograph, search results include deceased’s name, year of birth, year of death, and military recognition. Additional genealogy resources are available through the Lawton Public Library’s Family & Local History webpage.

08/24/2026

Four days later, the Battle of Long Island became the largest engagement of the war to date. The waiting for the storm to break was over.

08/23/2026

Congratulations to our former Regent Sandy A! Sandy received an award at the District XIII meeting yesterday for all her work at Fleet Week

08/23/2026

⚓️AUGUST 22, 1776: THE STORM BREAKS ⚓

For a week, we have watched the 1776 storm gather off Staten Island — a British fleet swelling in Lower New York Bay, letters crossing between old friends turned enemies. Today, the waiting ended.

Before dawn, British warships crossed the Narrows from Staten Island toward the shores of Long Island. An advance force of roughly 4,000 men under Generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis loaded into flatboats and rowed for a quiet stretch of beach at Gravesend Bay. A handful of American pickets were posted there — but they fell back without a real fight, and by 8 o’clock that morning, the British had landed unopposed.

They did not stop coming. By nightfall, nearly 15,000 British and Hessian troops stood on Long Island soil, backed by roughly 40 pieces of artillery. It was one of the largest amphibious landings in history to that point.

General Washington, watching from Manhattan, wrote to Congress the next morning that 8,000–9,000 troops had come ashore and were within three miles of the American lines. He detached six battalions at once, with five more standing ready. “I have no doubt,” he told Congress, “but a little time will produce some important events.”

He was right. Five days later, these two armies would collide at the Battle of Long Island — the largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War.

The buildup is over. The battle is coming.

08/22/2026

Today is R.E.D. Friday — and we’re wearing red to show our support! 🔴⭐ R.E.D. stands for Remember Everyone Deployed, and every Friday is an opportunity to honor the brave men and women of our Armed Forces who are away from their families and serving our nation. Whether it’s a red shirt, a red ribbon, or a red accessory, this simple act is a powerful reminder that we are thinking of them and will continue to show up for them until they all come home. El Redondo Chapter, NSDAR proudly stands with our active duty service members and their families — because the legacy of sacrifice and service that defines this nation didn’t end with the Revolution. It continues today, in uniform, far from home. ❤️🇺🇸

08/20/2026

On this day, August 20, 1776, a committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson reported back to Congress with their proposed design for a Great Seal of the United States.

Six weeks earlier, on the very same day the Declaration was adopted, Congress had tasked these three Founders with creating a national emblem. Their ideas were ambitious and biblical: Franklin pictured Moses parting the Red Sea as Pharaoh’s army drowned. Jefferson favored the Israelites in the wilderness. Adams proposed Hercules choosing between the paths of Pleasure and Virtue.

Congress wasn’t ready to decide — the report was tabled that same day, and it would take six more years and two more committees before the Great Seal we know today was finally adopted in 1782. But not everything from this first attempt was lost: the motto “E Pluribus Unum,” the Eye of Providence, and the date “MDCCLXXVI” all survived into the final design.

A reminder that even our national symbols were hard-won, debated, and years in the making — much like independence itself.

08/20/2026

Supplies were desperately being sought

As militiamen at the Continental Army flying camp at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, prepared for a British attack on New York, they were in desperate need of supplies. This advertisement, addressed “ To the charitable LADIES of Pennsylvania and New-Jersey,” implored them to donate “OLD SHEETS and go...

08/20/2026

**National Aviation Day — August 19**

On this day in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed National Aviation Day, deliberately choosing August 19th to honor Orville Wright’s birthday, born in 1871. Orville, along with his brother Wilbur, forever changed the course of history when their flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 proved that powered, controlled flight was possible. As Daughters of the American Revolution, we celebrate the same spirit of ingenuity, courage, and perseverance that carried our patriot ancestors through the Revolution and that later lifted the Wright brothers off the sands of North Carolina — a distinctly American drive to imagine what hasn’t been done and do it anyway. Today we honor all who have taken to the skies in service to our nation, from early aviation pioneers to the pilots of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and beyond. ✈️🇺🇸

08/19/2026

August 18, 1776: “It is agreed on all hands that our people engaged in this affair behaved with great resolution and intrepidity.”
Two nights before, American fire ships had tried to burn the British warship Phoenix as she sat in the Hudson. The attempt failed — but it seems to have worked anyway. On the morning of the 18th, the Phoenix and Rose quietly withdrew and rejoined the main fleet.
From his New York headquarters, George Washington wrote to Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull Sr., thanking the colony for its militia and reporting that nearly the whole British force in America — save troops still in Canada — now stood assembled outside the city. The calm wouldn’t last much longer.
📜 Source: Founders Online, National Archives

08/19/2026

“The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of s*x, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women’s suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women’s suffrage and part of the wider women’s rights movement.” - Wikipedia