ONDAWA CHAPTER DAR

Inscription

ONDAWA CHAPTER DAR
ON NOV. 8, 1894, DAUGHTERS OF
AMERICAN REV. LOCAL CHAPTER
FORMED AT HOME OF 1ST REGENT
MINERVA BUCK MCKIE. HOUSE
BECAME HISTORICAL SOC. 1929.
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2026

On November 8, 1894, Minerva McKie held the organizational meeting of the Cambridge Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) at her home in Cambridge, New York. Officially named the Ondawa Chapter, the group had seventeen charter members, with McKie serving as the first Regent.

McKie sadly passed away not long after the Ondawa Chapter had formed. After representing the chapter at the DAR’s 1895 Continental Congress, an annual meeting held in Washington, D.C., McKie contracted a cold that she never recovered from. She passed away on June 27, 1895. Shortly after McKie’s death, the chapter’s Corresponding Secretary and charter member, Martha McFarland noted that:

“Her death is an irreparable loss to the Chapter whose animating spirit she was, but from the increasing interest taken in the association and its aims, it would seem that in this her last effort to foster true patriotism and love of country she had indeed ‘builded [sic] a monument more enduring than bronze’” (American Monthly Magazine, October 1895, 390).

In 1929, Martha McFarland, serving as executor for McKie’s daughter Kate who had passed away, gave the McKie house to the Cambridge Historical Society. As of 2026, this remains the home of the historical society.

In 2024, the Ondawa Chapter celebrated its 130-year anniversary in the very same parlor where it was first convened under the leadership of Minerva McKie.