Today's DAR
February 2021 marks the 125th birthday of the DAR Library! What started with a handful of books donated by members to assist DAR staff in verifying DAR Applications has grown to a collection of more than 200,000 individual volumes and more than 5 million digital images, with more being added every day. Although its main focus has always been genealogy and Revolutionary War history, the Library also features a significant number of books on Native American history and ancestry, as well as extensive works on immigration history, family histories and biographies of historical figures who influenced the development of the United States. The diversity of the collection is a result of decades of efforts by DAR staff and DAR members to develop the Library into what it is today – one of the premiere genealogical collections in the United States.
Rather than focus on a single day, the Library will celebrate its 125th birthday throughout 2021 with monthly social media posts and videos, as well as other activities during the year. Among other topics, we will look at the different locations where the Library lived before moving into its permanent home in Memorial Continental Hall in 1949, surely one of the most visually stunning settings for a library collection imaginable.
