Photo by Gail Varnell _ Patty Weaver, left, accepts “Legacies of Our Great Grandmothers” from Christy Torok, a member of the Nancy Ward Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Wednesday at the East Ridge Library.
The Nancy Ward Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution donated a two-volume set of books to the East Ridge Library, Wednesday.
The books, “Legacies of Our Great Grand Mothers, Early Tennessee Women,” were presented by DAR member Christy Torok, a longtime resident of East Ridge.
“All across the state, the Daughters of the American Revolution have been gifting this set to different libraries,” Torok said. “We felt that the East Ridge library would like to have it and we wanted to give it to them.”
Patty Weaver, Interim Director of the library, said the books will be an excellent resource for those people using the library to research area-wide history and their own genealogy. She said this is the first time that the DAR has made a donation of to the library that contains more than 34,500 volumes in its collection.
The two-volume set is a collection of stories and lineages of women who lived in the Tennessee Territory prior to the first census in 1850. About 275 women, many of them wives or daughters of Revolutionary Patriots, are featured in the index of the 1,500 page set.
A narrative sketch and a lineage chart of known births, marriages, deaths and burial dates are given. In addition, places of each woman’s birth, her parents and siblings along with her husband and his parents and siblings is documented. Of course, the progeny of these women are included with source citations footnoted throughout the book.
Torok, who joined the DAR after retiring from teaching, said the book has been in the making for at least three years. She said that different Tennessee Daughters submitted stories and lineages from their own families to the project.
To become a member of the DAR, a person must submit documented records which show a lineage to a person who was a “patriot” during the Revolutionary War. The “patriot,” Torok said, may not necessarily have been a soldier, but a person who aided the cause of the revolution.
Torok said it was conceivable that “Legacies of Our Great Grand Mothers … Early Tennessee Women” may be useful for someone interested in joining the venerable organization.
“Someone might say, ‘oh, I remember seeing that name in a family Bible,’ and find out there is a connection there,” Torok said.
Gail Varnell, an employee of the library, said that a number of people use what resources the library has to help research their family history.
“I think this is just wonderful,” Varnell said. “We’ve got nothing like this in our current collection.”
According to library records, 6,108 adults and 2,997 juveniles hold library cards which allows them to check books out from the East Ridge Library. Last year, the library loaned out more than 44,000 books to area readers.
