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Daughters of the American Revolution

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), founded in 1890 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a volunteer women's service organization dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and securing America's future through better education for children. As one of the most inclusive genealogical societies in the country, DAR boasts 168,000 members in 3,000 chapters across the United States and internationally. Any woman 18 years or older-regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background-who can prove lineal descent from a patriot of the American Revolution, is eligible for membership.

Over 800,000 applications for membership have been submitted to DAR since the organization began - the majority of them handwritten. After years of handling and simply from age, many of these one of a kind documents were showing serious signs of decay. In 2000 the DAR embarked on an ambitious and vital plan to preserve these membership applications for future generations of members and researchers.

Working closely with Crowley, DAR defined the right approach to preservation and developed a plan to create a set of digital images and microfiche for each application. "Crowley was great to work with," said Victor Kunze, Director of IT. "They were flexible, able to work with any kind of media."

In all, the complete collection of 1.2 million pages of application material, including applicants' lineage, were preserved in both digital and microfiche formats. The next effort is the Descendant's Project, through which 600 volunteers will index every name on the lineage pages for easy access through search.