Colonial Dames of America
American nonprofit organization
The Colonial Dames of America (CDA) is an American organization comprising women who descend from one or more ancestors who lived in British North America between 1607 and 1775, and who aided the colonies in public office, in military service, or in another acceptable capacity. The CDA is listed as an approved lineage society with the Hereditary Society Community of the United States of America.
The National Headquarters is at Mount Vernon Hotel Museum in New York City, a building purchased by the CDA in 1924.
History
The organization was founded in 1890, shortly before the founding of two similar societies, The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America and the Daughters of the American Revolution. In April 1890, Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer (Maria Denning Van Rensselaer), Mrs. John Lyon Gardiner, and Mrs. Archibald Gracie King decided to found a patriotic society of women descended from Colonial ancestry.
The original CDA insignia was designed by Tiffany & Co.
Notable members
Lillie Stella Acer Ballagh, founder of Matinee Musical Club, Los Angeles
Fanny Yarborough Bickett (1870-1941), First Lady of North Carolina and first female president of the North Carolina Railroad
Dianne Cannestra, quilter and President National of the United States Daughters of 1812
Margaret Ann Scruggs Carruth (1892–1988), etcher, printmaker, illustrator and educator
Florence Anderson Clark (1835–1918), author, newspaper editor, librarian, university dean
Cynthia Beverley Tucker Washington Coleman (1832–1908), writer and preservationist in Williamsburg, Virginia.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Colonial Dames of America” as american nonprofit organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american nonprofit organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7726811. VIAF identifies the subject as 153763171. The Library of Congress control number is n94121002. Authority coordinates are 40.761, -73.960. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1607, 1775, 1924 and 1890.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Colonial Dames of America primary sources, Colonial Dames of America archive and Colonial research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Colonial Dames of America” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.