PRESIDENT GENERAL. It is moved and seconded that this report be accepted with thanks. All in favor will say "aye;" opposed "no." It is accepted. We will now listen to the report of the Historian General, Mrs. Seymour.

Mrs. SEYMOUR:

Madam President and Ladies of the Congress: I am happy to present to you my report as Historian of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution for the year 1898.

The editing of the Lineage Books is a specialty of this department. The work of the Seventh Volume was co-temporary with the Spanish War, and we realized anew how precious are the memories of the revolutionary patriots with every baptism of war and blood shed through which this Nation passes-maintaining the principles which they defended with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

Our patriotic songs link the Revolution with every successive war for liberty and every struggle to maintain the honor of our flag demonstrates anew the wisdom and foresight of the founder of our Nation and a new impetus is given to perpetuate their heroic deeds as is done in the Lineage Books of this Society.

We are now editing the Ninth Volume, which includes some of the records of 1895. During the past two years six of these volumes have been published and I find that three volumes a year are all that can be edited with the care that is necessary to make them valuable as books of reference in our own Chapters and to genealogists and librarians throughout the country.

There is nothing that the Daughters are doing which should be of such interest to every member as these Lineage Books, for they are an epitomized history of the Society.

What a mine of historical facts has come into our possession in the application papers of the more than twenty-seven thousand members which have been received since its organization, and when the expressed essence of this data has been culled out and returned to the Chapters in the Lineage Books they possess treasures of genealogical and historical lore which they will realize more and more as they become familiarized with these volumes.

Gathering the facts together is most commendable, but to publish them is our duty as a patriotic Society and the outlay now required will bring valuable results and rich returns-for wherever these books are read it creates a desire to become a member.

It would be impossible for me to give you the letters of approbation and encouragement received from, high authorities about the Lineage Books, but I quote from one historian, who writes: "It is a general opinion that a mass of data is all that is necessary to make history, but to take this data, arrange and dove-tail it so that each shall fit in chronological order, as well as in relevance, and make a continuity of

the whole and not weaken the subject with verbosity in the ending, this is genius. I deem this the grand feature of the Daughters' work." Our historical Society presents many interesting features, the most unique of which is that of its Real Daughters, those members whose fathers were revolutionary soldiers. Since the organization of this Society there have been 339 of these Real Daughters, 276 of whom are now living. Of these, six have been Regents of Chapters. Mrs. R. Ogden Doremus was appointed first Regent of New York City Chapter. She graces this Congress with her presence, and we delight to pay our tribute to her noble life of charities and benevolence which has culminated in her most earnest efforts to develop the patriotic and historic objects of the Daughters of the American Revolution. [Applause.]

Her activity in the Sanitary Fair in New York in 1863, in the French Fair for the disabled soldiers in the Franco-Prussian war, also for the Mt. Vernon Association, were preparatory to her untiring efforts in our Society. The father of Mrs. Doremus was Hubbard Skidmore. When a boy of nine years he fed his father's cannon with powder and at the age of thirteen he delivered valuable papers to his general, passing through the camp of the enemy during the cover of the night. Another Real Daughter, Mrs. Mary Anne Washington, was the first Regent of the Macon Chapter, Macon, Georgia. She was present at the first council of the Regents appointed by the first President General, Mrs. Harrison, in Washington, October 6, 1891. Her father, Samuel Hammond, was a colonel of cavalry for Virginia during the Revolution and he fought at King's Mountain, Cowpens, Ninety-Six and Eutaw.

Another Real Daughter, Mrs. Sophia Van Dolson Andrews, was the first Regent of the Abigail Adams Chapter at Des Moines, Iowa. She was a native of Elmira, New York, and was educated at the University of Michigan. She has been the president of several women's clubs and was the first woman admitted to the Iowa Legislature as a press correspondent. Mrs. Andrews is still in the prime of life, an accomplished and useful woman.

Mrs. Susan E. Polk Rayner was a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and was the first Regent of a Chapter in Stephensville, Texas. Her father was Lieutenant Colonel William Polk, of North Carolina. He commanded the regiment which removed the Liberty Bell from Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, at the approach of the British, to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where it was concealed beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church, being returned to Philadelphia in the autumn of 1778.

Another Real Daughter, Mrs. Harriet Wetmore Sells, is Regent of the Chapter at Salt Lake City, Utah.

A sixth Real Daughter, Mrs. Anna Morse, was Regent of a

Chapter at Cherry Valley, New York. She passed away January 10, 1898.

Pennsylvania has both the oldest and youngest Real DaughtersMrs. Sarah Doran Terry is one hundred and six years of age. She resides in Philadelphia and is a member of the Quaker City Chapter. She attends its meetings and recites at its entertainments. She spent much of her early life abroad. She entertains her callers with her recollections of Frederick the Sixth of Denmark, at whose court she resided. She also remembers Queen Victoria as a child at play in Kensington Gardens. She reads the papers thoroughly, for her eyesight is wonderful. She enjoys life and her especial pride and delight is in being a Daughter of the American Revolution.

The youngest Real Daughter in the Society is Mrs. Annie Knight Gregory. She is fifty-five years of age and is a member of Conrad Weiser Chapter, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.

Connecticut is the banner State, for her total number of Real Daughters has been seventy-nine, sixty-nine of whom are now living. That State also has the honor of possessing the second Real Daughter in point of age, Miss Mary Spooner, of Ruth Hart Chapter, Meriden, a resident of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her age at this time is one hundred and five years and twelve days. She attributes her longevity to her frugal, quiet life and to having never risked herself upon steam or electric cars. A peculiar feature of her history is that she has lived in three towns and one city without ever having moved. The Susan Carrington Clarke Chapter is the banner Chapter of the Society, it having numbered seventeen Real Daughters. Nancy Ray, her senior Real Daughter, passed away upon Christmas day, 1898, being in her one hundred and third year.

Miss Anna M. Benton, of Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth Chapter, Connecticut, is in her one hundred and second year. Mrs. Abigail Foote Loomis celebrated her one hundredth birthday in June, 1898. A photograph represents her as seated in her parlor, a vase of one hundred roses by her side, the gift of her Chapter upon her birthday.

At an early day Connecticut had a centenarian who knitted stockings for the soldiers of '76 and the soldiers of '61.

Massachusetts ranks second in her number of Real Daughters. Her total number has been fifty-nine, of whom forty-seven are now living. Mercy Warren Chapter, of Springfield, has the largest number in the State and is second in the Society, it having had eleven Real Daughters. The Old South Chapter, Boston, has a distinguished Real Daughter, Miss Sophronia Fletcher, M. D., who was the first resident physician at Mt. Holyoke College, Massachusetts.

New Jersey has a Real Daughter one hundred and three years of age. Mrs. Hannah S. Davis, of Absecon; also, Mrs. Hedges, of Nova Cesarea Chapter, who has passed her one hundredth birthday.

Michigan has had a Real Daughter, a centenarian, who passed away

in 1898. She was Mrs. Nancy de Graff Tolle. Among Mrs. Tolle's reminiscences was the visit of Lafayette to Schenectady, New York, where she resided in her youth. She was one of the young girls who strewed flowers in the path of the gallant Marquis. She also saw and remembered General Washington on his visit to that city.

Leaving our centenarians and coming down to our more youthful Real Daughters, of whom we have nearly one hundred in the nineties, we notice Mrs. Burnett, of Watertown, New York, who in her one hundredth year is the capable housekeeper for her son, a youth of seventy-seven.

During the year 1898, Mrs. Annie Morehead Hobson has been added as a Real Daughter to Columbia Chapter, South Carolina. Mrs. Hobson is the grandmother of Lieutenant Richmond Pierson Hobson, the hero of the "Merrimac" [applause], whose recent visit to her was most touching. She is totally blind and wept as she passed her hands over his face because she could not see him. Mrs. Hobson's father was John Morehead, of Virginia. He fought at Cowpens and King's Mountain. The love of liberty which animated the revolutionary patriot was the same which impelled his descendant of this day to his deed of daring in the Spanish-American War.

I take pleasure in referring to a Trans-Mississippi Chapter. The Elizabeth Benton, of Kansas City, Missouri, which has enrolled six Real Daughters. Their photographs are in the alcove belonging to the Daughters of the American Revolution in the Public Library of Kansas City. These Real Daughters are the golden links which connect us with those patriots who gained for us the priceless liberty which we enjoy. They are fast passing away. As a historical Society should we not esteem it a privilege and a duty to preserve the personal autograph sketches and the photographs of these Real Daughters in a permanent form, that we may transmit to those who shall come after us these precious souvenirs of this most unique class of our members, when they all shall have passed away?

Respectfully submitted,

(Signed)

[Applause.]

MARY JANE SEYMOUR, Historian General N. S. D. A. R.

PRESIDENT GENERAL. I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Ogden Doremus, of New York.

Mrs. DOREMUS. Daughters of the American Revolution, and granddaughters, I heave heard it whispered that they did not think Mrs. Doremus was a hundred years old, and I have gratified our Historian on the subject by agreeing to appear before you to prove the fact. I would accept being two hundred years old for the title of being a "Real Daughter." That title of being real, in this age of unrealism. I think

a great honor. [Applause.] I must explain to you: My father was a boy hero; at the opening of the Revolution he was nine years old and served at his father's cannon; thirty years older than my mother, he was, and he went through the entire war; at thirteen he crossed the enemy's country, under cover of the night, took valuable papers to the colonel and delivered them safely, because he would have been shot if he had been caught. His whole life was a series of triumphs. In the War of 1812 he captured a French privateer, and took her a prize to New Orleans; and so throughout his life. I have the honor to appear before you to-night, ladies, as the first "Real Daughter," and am very happy to greet you, but I would like one moment, Madam President. You can hardly think, when you reflect, that I could be a "Real Daughter," and when you think of all this glorious and great country has achieved in the short space of time since my father, a boy, fought in the Revolution. I would like, but it is not the place, to give you some notes I had prepared, giving a list of the wonderful inventions in this country-telegraph, telephone, photograph, every kind of advance in science. It is wonderful when you realize, when you think of the X-rays, the anaesthetics, and the anaesthesia, and what has been done for the civilization of the world; and in gunpowder also, and the wonderful machinery of warfare; and it has all been done within this short space of time. I do not know that any of you remember the little poem of Saxe, of "Brother Jonathan." I would advise you all to read the poem of John G. Saxe, of "Brother Jonathan." Thanking you for your courtesy in calling me, I will withdraw. [Applause.]

PRESIDENT GENERAL. The report of the Historian General is before the house.

A MEMBER.
Seconded.

I move that it be accepted with thanks.

Mrs. EDWARDS, of Michigan. I should like to make one correction, that Michigan is very proud of having six "Real Daughters" instead of one.

PRESIDENT GENERAL. Michigan has the honor of stating to the Historian General that it has six "Real Daughters" instead of one.