Initially, the Daughters thought to join the Sons of the American Revolution, organized in 1889, in what seemed a common mission: to perpetuate the memory and spirit of the Revolutionary patriots. But at a meeting of the Sons in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 30, 1890, the Sons voted to exclude women, galvanizing a force as determined as that which fought for American Independence. As Letitia Green Stevenson would later write in her 1913 account of the Society’s founding: “It became apparent that if women were to accomplish any distinctive patriotic work, it must be within their own circle, and under their own leadership. The ardor and zeal of a few undaunted women never flagged, and their determination to organize a distinct woman’s society became a fixed purpose.”
The morning after the Son’s fateful vote, “American women throughout the country read the account in the newspapers and were stirred with indignation,” a sentiment documented for posterity in the first annual report to the Congress of the newly organized National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. One of those women, Mary Smith Lockwood, widow of a Union soldier, noted author and women’s rights advocate, channeled her reaction in a stirring letter to the Washington Post printed in July 13, 1890. In it, she recounted the thrilling story of the heroic Hannah Arnett, who courageously challenged a meeting of men hosted by her husband in their home, shaming them into supporting the cause of the revolution. Mary Lockwood ended her letter with these questions: “Were there no mothers of the Revolution? Where will the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution place Hannah Arnett?” Her questions would be answered swiftly by hundreds.