National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
patriotic society in United States
The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) is an American lineage society founded in 1891. It consists of 43 corporate societies in 42 states and the District of Columbia and has more than 15,000 members. Members trace their descent from men and women who served the American colonies before July 5, 1776. The organization's national headquarters is Dumbarton House in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
History
The organization was founded in 1891, shortly after the founding of a similar society, the Colonial Dames of America (CDA), which was created to have a centrally organized structure under the control of the parent Society in New York City.
The NSCDA was intended as a federation of State Societies in which each unit had a degree of autonomy. Another society formed around the same time was the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Historic preservation became an early focus of the organization. In 1896, New York City leased the Van Cortlandt House to the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York for restoration and operation as a historic house museum.
In 1928, the national organization purchased a Federal-period house in Georgetown for use as its headquarters. The property, renamed Dumbarton House, was subsequently restored to its early nineteenth-century appearance and became the organization's historic house museum as well as its national headquarters.
“National Society of the Colonial Dames of America” enters the record as patriotic society in United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what National, Society and Colonial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Q7753216. VIAF identifies the subject as 157730622. The Library of Congress control number is n83066041. Authority coordinates are 38.911, -77.056. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1776, 1896 and 1928.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Society of the 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.