Today's DAR
From 22 to 26 October 2025, the Walter Hines Page Chapter, London, United Kingdom, welcomed over 160 members, associate members and guests to London to celebrate our 100th anniversary with four days of festivities consisting of over 25 events and tours. We were honoured to welcome the President General Ginnie Sebastian Storage, as well as the First Vice President General Kathryn Walker West, the Chaplain General Mernie Sams Crane, the National Chair Units Overseas Committee Lanabeth Lunceford Horgen, Honorary President General Lynn Forney Young and Past Reporter General Mindy Kammeyer.
Walter Hines Page Chapter Visit - A Visit to London
Highlights of our celebrations included a wreath laying at the plaque dedicated to Walter Hines Page at Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, which was attended by HRH The Princess Royal and the US Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, a welcome reception featuring the unveiling of an America 250! Patriot Plaque which will be installed at Benjamin Franklin House, and a gala dinner hosted at the Lansdowne Club where the Treaty of Paris was drafted. Guests were able to attend private tours of places including Benjamin Franklin House, Sulgrave Manor, His Majesty’s College of Arms, Hampton Court Palace and the Churchill War Rooms, where they explored Anglo-American history, British culture and our shared heritage. The weekend concluded with the Sunday service at St Paul’s Cathedral, where attendees had reserved seats under the dome, a visit to the American Memorial Chapel, and afternoon tea at the Royal Automobile Club.
The Walter Hines Page Chapter was established in 1925 with 38 members. It forms part of the Units Overseas and is the oldest surviving overseas chapter. The founding members included Elisabeth Walton Allen, a Titanic survivor; Adelaide Bragg Gillespie, an author; Martha Washington Agerter Jenks, director of a film company; and Marguerita Lott, a clerk at the United States Embassy. Today our Chapter has 130 members residing throughout all the four nations of the United Kingdom, as well as in the US, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. We also have over 800 engaged associate members.
Permission to name our Chapter after Ambassador Page was granted by his widow. Born in Cary, North Carolina, Walter Hines Page is best known for his role as Ambassador to the Court of St James’s at the time of the First World War. He was instrumental in fostering the close relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, and from an early stage in the war urged President Woodrow Wilson that involvement in the war was vital to US interests. Prior to his appointment as ambassador, Hines Page was a highly regarded journalist and publisher, serving as editor of the Atlantic Monthly and helping to found the publishing house Doubleday, Page and Company. He was also instrumental in the establishment of North Carolina State University. Thanks to the efforts of associate member Julie Stangler, the mayor of Cary issued a proclamation celebrating our anniversary.
Our founding members intended that our Chapter should focus not only on education, historic preservation and patriotism, but on strengthening the ties between their home and adopted countries, a bond that would develop into the “special relationship.” The women who founded our Chapter were far from home, but their DAR work was a way of connecting to their homeland and remembering where they had come from, while building new lives overseas. Today, we have a diverse membership made up of British citizens, permanent residents, students, those who are building a life for themselves in the U.K., and those who live in other countries but have strong ties to Britain. Our diversity makes us strong, and arguably, lots of fun! Annual events include our Christmas cookie exchange, wreath layings at the Brookwood and Cambridge American cemeteries, participation in the Thanksgiving Day Service at St Paul’s Cathedral and excursions to historic properties. We support a wide range of U.K. and international charities and projects and we are particularly proud to sponsor Benjamin Franklin House’s education programme. We have a thriving active group of Juniors and are proud to have had two of our Juniors become “State” Outstanding Juniors in the past three years.
As we look forward to our second century, we welcome new associate members and are excited to renew our aims of promoting education, historic preservation, patriotism and strengthening the bonds between our two countries.
