>> The following is a presentation of KBTC Profiles.

>> I would define history as our national story.

Who we are, where we came from, how we got to where we are, it's the voice of all the people who came before us who can't really speak anymore.

We need to know who we are, and we need to make sure that the voices of all those people are heard.

My name is Lynne, and I am a member of the Mary Ball Chapter in Tacoma, Washington, of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The DAR is a service organization with a genealogical anchor.

We are a non-political community service organization with our main areas of focus in historic preservation, education, and patriotism.

And to join, you need to be able to prove lineal descent from a revolutionary patriot or someone who aided the war effort.

So it doesn't have to necessarily be a soldier.

We have women patriots.

You need to prove that lineage.

And beyond that, we are very community service-oriented.

>> There's about 3,000 chapters across the nation, 190,000 members.

It's a huge organization.

In Washington State, we have about 3,000 members and 37 chapters.

The DAR was founded in 1890, and that was just five years after Washington was a state.

Four years after the organization was founded in Washington, DC, all the way across on the West Coast, in the upper corner here in Tacoma, they formed the Mary Ball Chapter, and we have been in continuous operation since then.

Mary Ball Washington was the mother of George Washington, and I think the original founders felt that that was an apt name to name the chapter because George Washington is the namesake of our state.

>> Tacoma in the 1880s was a bustling metropolis.

The first transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, had its terminus in Tacoma, and so many of the arrivals who were coming from back East, they found their way to Tacoma.

A bustling waterfront with the railroad and businesses being established, Tacoma being the port where timber and minerals and agricultural products would have been exported into Puget Sound and then out into the Pacific and to markets around the country and around the world.

Tacoma was booming at that time.

>> The very first members of the chapter were very prominent women in Tacoma.

They had come West with their families.

Their husbands had followed the business out here to Tacoma, following the railroad.

In that time, the opportunities for women were very limited and very structured.

So to be able to found an organization gave them the opportunity to reach out into the community and do the things that they wanted to do, and find additional avenues for service and giving back to the community, and using their talents that were not being utilized in just homemaking.

>> The club movement really started to take off in kind of the mid to late 1890s up through, certainly through the 1900s, 1910s.

And these clubs helped form social policy.

You know, women couldn't vote, they couldn't be involved, obviously, in politics, but through these community service organizations, they did shape policy in Tacoma.

One of our members and a former regent, Virginia Mason, one of the prominent women in Washington to work with the suffrage movement.

She was a real force in that area.

>> Providing educational opportunities was paramount for citizens of the territory as well as for women who were active in these organizations.

And so literacy and education, cultural development, music, theater, newspapers, these are all elements of the urban areas in particular, like Tacoma, where these cities, still in their early years of development, are striving for a sort of cosmopolitan feel of cities back in the East.

And so this prioritization of cultural life, museums, schools, education, things like that, made the Pacific Northwest, relative to other parts of the country, a very cultured, literate place.

>> When the organization started, the women saw that there was a need for preserving our history.

It was actually at a time when some of that was going away.

The generations were starting to not really know about the founding of the nation.

The original women said we need to come together, we need to organize, and start preserving this information.

That work started to move forward so that women could then go out in their communities, also educate, educate to our history, keep this story alive.

Today, we move into the modern-day DAR.

The makeup of the chapter is extremely interesting because there's lawyers, doctors.

We have professionals.

We have homemakers, women in all walks of life that contribute to the overall makeup of the group.

But everything we do surrounds, especially, history and research, expanding into different areas of history, making it accessible for people.

>> I would like people to know that Mary Ball has been in this city since 1894, and we are still relevant and active today.

And I would love for people to know that we're not a political organization.

We're very non-political, and we have a wide range of members.

Patriotism isn't just about waving the flag.

It's not just about donating to a veteran's organization.

It's being a good citizen.

It's remembering to vote.

And it's supporting your local community, your larger community, and being part of that in a positive way.

[ Music ] >> Funding for this edition of KBTC Profiles provided by the KBTC Association.

>> KBTC Profiles are available at kbtc.org.