Our DAR motto is; God, Home & Country. This embraces every aspect of the mission of the NSDAR. Our God is served by each member in accordance with her beliefs. Our home is this beautiful country. We use our strength in numbers to protect our historic institutions, to educate all of our nation’s children, and make opportunities for all Americans and experience the thrill of being part of the American dream; that is patriotism. Conservation, is our focus for the future. It is the direction of the future that is protected, safe, and healthy for generations to come.
Years before the 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps was conceived and prior to the 1939 President General’s Project supporting the Penny Pines Project, members of the Louisa St. Clair Chapter NSDAR were already taking action to reverse the environmental impact of over-harvesting from a century or more of logging in the state. In 1927, Chapter Conservation Chair, Etta S. Wilson, working with George Hogarth, Director of the Michigan Department of Commerce (a predecessor of the DEQ), organized the funding and planting of 104,900 native white pine seedlings on 220 acres of a 544 acre state site near Houghton Lake. The reforestation project was complete in 1928; and in 1929, a grand granite monument was erected on the site in recognition of the chapter efforts.
On October 4, 1930, a contingent of chapter Daughters traveled by motorcar caravan to dedicate the “Louisa St. Clair Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution Forest.” On the 85th anniversary of that dedication, October 4, 2015, the chapter retraced the footsteps of our chapter forebears and rededicated the first DAR Forest in the nation. In so doing, Michigan Daughters pay tribute to the venerable women at the forefront of conservation in the early twentieth century.
Citation: Photos from Louisa St. Clair Chapter NSDAR archives.