The Daughters of the American Revolution and Saratoga Battlefield

Ellen Hardin Walworth holding her great-grandfather's Revolutionary War sword.

Courtesy: Saratoga Springs History Museum.

Why do we choose to remember?

Sometimes remembering is purely practical, like “where are my keys?” Sometimes it’s functional, like “how do I change a printer cartridge?” Often, there’s something relational involved: “how am I connected to what I’m trying to remember?”

For the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), women descendants of combatants in the American War for Independence (1775-1783), remembering was strongly relational…and interwoven with Saratoga Battlefield.

DAR co-founder Ellen Hardin Walworth’s first visit to Saratoga Battlefield, around 1851, was powerfully connective. Walking the same ground her great-grandfather, Colonel John Hardin, fought on during the Battles of Saratoga (1777), she called the tour “a marked event in [her] young life.” The visit fueled her lifelong dedication to preserving the site, including as a Saratoga Monument Association board member and chairperson of its Committee on Tablets.

As a DAR co-founder in 1890, Walworth helped imbue the group with similar dedication. Its founding principles of history, education, and patriotism empowered members to connect with and express their own sentiments, heritage, and memory. Walworth shared that on the local level also, as she became a co-organizer of the Saratoga Chapter DAR.

That heritage eventually revisited Walworth’s roots, as the DAR greatly supported Saratoga Battlefield. From 1903-09, the Saratoga Chapter DAR set up markers directing visitation from Saratoga Springs to Saratoga Battlefield. In the early 1920s, the DAR stood with the Sons of the American Revolution to support preserving Saratoga Battlefield. And from 1929-31, the early part of the Great Depression, the National Society DAR collected donations of 30 cents per member, amassing $11,000 for a “Monument to the Unknown American Dead,” installed on the Battlefield in 1931.

Far from gone, the DAR still supports special events at Saratoga Battlefield.

Why do you choose to remember?