Julie Butler qualifies for DAR membership with discovery of Captain Pledger

Julie Jackson Butler spent more than two years trying to find documentation of her bloodline to become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She finally found what she needed — and she now has her official DAR membership card.

“It was mostly talking to an elderly aunt on the phone and calling little county halls in South Carolina to see what records they had,” Butler said. “The one piece of the puzzle I was missing was this sweet little lady at a South Carolina clerk of the court office. ... I told her what I was needing, and she said maybe she could find the land deed — and 30 minutes later she called me back with documents in hand.”

Butler qualified for the DAR on her father’s Vining branch of the family tree. Her sixth great-grandfather, Capt. Philip Pledger (1710-1787), served in the South Carolina Militia as a civil servant and later as a blacksmith. He also was a justice of the peace and a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

A LOOK INTO THE PAST

Like many folks looking for a hobby to occupy their time during the pandemic lockdown, Butler turned to the internet and got hooked on genealogy.

“I have a friend who I went to high school with, Kathy Hall Knight (who writes under K.I. Knight), who did genealogy, and I read her books and got started. I went on the free trial for Ancestry — and then I ended up signing up for Ancestry because I was so deep in it. I enjoyed it, and it’s become a really cool pastime.”

When Butler reached the 1700s in the genealogy database, she noticed relatives’ names included military ranks, and this piqued her interest in seeing if she would qualify for the DAR.

“You have to have a patriot (in your family tree), and they could participate in different ways,” Butler said. “If (they) provided food for the troops — anything having to do with the Revolutionary War. But you have to prove the lineage; you have to prove the link to your parents and then their parents, and so on."

Butler qualified through her father, Donald Ernest Jackson, whose mother was Dora Virginia Vining Jackson, whose father was Pledger Arline Vining, whose father was William Pledger Vining, whose father was Josiah Vining, whose father was Jesse Pledger, whose mother was Phoebe Pledger Vining, whose father was Capt. Pledger.

“It’s a lot of research,” she said. “You look up birth certificates, death certificates, land deeds, obituaries, newspaper articles, war records, pension records, anything to verify the sons and daughters to prove the lineage to prove the pedigree all the way back to your ancestor.”

Butler said she was interested in the local DAR chapter once she learned it is involved in local philanthropic endeavors, such as cleaning headstones in one of the cemeteries in Oakland.

Several women who already are members of the DAR were invaluable in helping Butler accomplish her goal of discovering a patriot.

She filed all her paperwork and last week received notification of her official membership number. Her chapter welcome-in ceremony is Sept. 19.

DAR membership allows people access to the extensive genealogy libraries so they can further their family tree research, and it includes eligibility to attend the organization’s annual Continental Congress sessions in Washington D.C.

Butler hopes to expand the reach of the local DAR and will serve as chair of the Education Committee. She wants to partner with a local elementary school and participate in the DAR’s nationwide fifth-grade essay contest.

“I wish I would have taken the time to do this while my grandparents were alive, because I think my grandmother Jackson — since it’s her side of the family — because she would have been tickled to death, in her words,” Butler said.

“Now I’m looking on my mom’s (Alma Joyce Rogers Jackson McWilliams’) side of the family because she has a few patriots and we would like to get her application completed too,” Butler said.

She might have found her paternal patriot, but she has no plans to stop her commitment to her ancestry. She actually has gone back as far as the 1500s on her father’s side and about the 1600s on her mother’s side.

“And then you go overseas, and records are a lot more difficult to come by,” she said.

She has discovered there are numerous churches in Scotland with the Rogers name on the stone and is curious to see what else she can find.

“I’m anxious now … to see if anyone came over on the Mayflower,” she said. “I’m anxious to see what other societies I can join.”

ADAMS-ONIS TREATY CHAPTER

The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in 1890 and has more than 185,000 members in 3,000 chapters in the United States and abroad. Members provide millions of volunteer service hours a year to local communities in support of historic preservation, education and patriotism.

The Adams-Onis Treaty Chapter was organized in the Winter Garden/Ocoee area July 11, 2020, during the pandemic; the first meetings were held on Zoom. The chapter was named for the treaty that was negotiated by then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams that made East and West Florida U.S. territories. The chapter was organized on Adams' birthday and currently has 49 members.

The new chapter is finding ways to volunteer in the community. Members have supported local veterans; cleaned tombstones, marked veterans’ graves with flags and participated in Wreaths Across America at area cemeteries; and promoted literacy with the installation of a Little Free Library Thursday, July 13, in front of American Legion Post 63 in downtown Winter Garden.

The chapter meets September through May at West Oaks Library in Ocoee, which stores the Orange County Library System’s genealogy records. The meetings include guest speakers and discussions on patriotic and historical topics.

Brittany Jenkins was the organizing regent who started the chapter. She became the first regent and now is the registrar who assists potential members with their application and proving their lineage.

She joined DAR in 2014 when she found a person in her family tree who was labeled as a DAR ancestor. She has since discovered 30 more patriots in her tree.

“I was looking for a way to become active in community service when I found DAR,” Jenkins said. “The three pillars of DAR (historic preservation, education and patriotism) really speak to me, and I love being able to help preserve and share American history and support our nation's active-duty military and our veterans.”

Marcea Oetting, the organizing vice regent, is the current regent and will lead the chapter as president for the next two years. She also became a member of DAR in 2014, and it was easy for her to join because her mother also is a member. Oetting said her grandmother filed the DAR paperwork for the family in 1962, so Oetting is a fourth-generation member.

She said she joined as a way to honor her grandmother and mother because DAR had been important to them.

“Since then, I have come to realize all of the good being done on the national, state and local levels,” Oetting said. “Impacting our community in a positive way is another way to give back to our country, state and even our neighborhood.”