Local DAR looks for links to patriots

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The Major Joseph Bloomfield Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution is looking for a few good women to become members. For the faint of heart, be advised: The process to become a DAR member can be arduous and time consuming. You must prove, by documentation, that you are a blood relative of someone who fought in or supported the American Revolutionary War. But there is assistance for you to prove this. If you believe your ancestry traces back to the founding of our country and you would like to explore DAR membership, there will be a DAR genealogy workshop on Saturday, Feb. 25, at the Verona Public Library, 17 Gould St., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The workshop is for prospective members of the Bloomfield and other local chapters.

According to Bonnie Sharkey, the Bloomfield chapter regent, her chapter has 47 current and 30 prospective members. She spoke to The Independent Press, along with Anita Magatti, a past regent, at the Bloomfield Public Library last week.
“To be a DAR member is special,” Sharkey said. “Not everyone’s history goes back to the founding of our nation. To be a member is prestigious; it’s pride.”

She said the individuals who fought in or supported the American Revolutionary War are referred to as “patriots” by the DAR.
“We stand for patriotism, education and historic preservation,” Sharkey said of the DAR.
The Bloomfield DAR chapter was founded by Kathryn Cockefair, its first regent, on April 1, 1916. The national chapter was founded in 1890 by four women, including Eugenia Washington, whose great-grandfather was George Washington’s brother; and Mary Lockwood, who took exception, in a Washington Post letter to the editor, to the exclusion of women by the Sons of the American Revolution. Three months later, the DAR was founded. Both Sharkey and Magatti said that tracing one’s ancestry back to a patriot is a way of honoring someone who helped establish the United States. Not surprisingly, once a woman becomes a member, she may discover more ancestors who fought for or supported the nascent country and will want to bring their names to the light.

For DAR membership, Sharkey traced her ancestry to a sixth great-grandfather, Andreas Bittner, of the Pennsylvania militia.
“I always had an inkling,” she said. “My ancestors were here since about the late 1600s.”

Magatti is a descendant of two patriots. One is Bowers Jacocks, a corporal in the New York militia.
“He died in a sugar house,” she said. “They were used as prisons by the British.”
The other is Adrian Onderdonk, a private in the New York militia. Both Magatti and Sharkey tried to prove they were descendants of two other patriots, but could not.

Determining if birth, marriage, death certificates and other documents are the sinew connecting someone to a patriot is the responsibility of the chapter registrar. For the Major Bloomfield Chapter, that’s Mary Berrigan, who said her own application so impressed everyone 12 years ago that she was pressed into duty and has been the registrar ever since.
“It’s not an easy job,” she said during a recent telephone
interview.
If a woman, who is at least 18 years old, wants to become a member, Berrigan said they will be assigned a chapter, one close to where they live, because the DAR is a service organization. Berrigan is also notified and invites the person to attend a meeting. The next step is the application process.

“My job is to walk them through it,” she said. “They have one year to provide the documentation. That can be a dozen generations. A lot of people kind of know they have a patriot and it’s not a story in the family. You start with yourself and provide a birth certificate.”

Berrigan acknowledged that, with each successive generation, an applicant comes to a fork in the genealogical road: Do you follow the maternal or paternal path?
“This is not an easy job for me,” she reiterated. “You have to prove a lot. If I cannot figure out a problem, there’s a group in the state DAR I can give it to.”

Breaking the news to someone that their line of ascent to a patriot does not hold up is difficult.
“They’ve been working for a year and telling them it’s not a viable thing, it’s sad,” she said.
Some women, she added, have been trying to prove their blood line to a patriot since 2015, but because they have started, she will not drop them.

On the other hand, Berrigan has multiple patriots. One was a private in the Pennsylvania militia named Jacob Singley whose father-in-law, Caspar Klotz, was also a patriot. She is working on two others, a father and a son. In her genealogical searches, she also discovered that she and Sharkey were related.
“That was the fun thing I found out when Bonnie joined,” she chuckled. “I said, ‘Hey Bonnie, we’re cousins.’”