“DESCENDEND FROM IMMIGRANTS AND REVOLUTIONISTS:” THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, IMMIGRATION, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

In 1909, the Connecticut Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, with the help of John Foster Carr, set out to help Americanize Italian Immigrants to the United States, helping them become part of American society. This effort took the form of the written Guide to the United States for the Information of the Immigrant Italian (1910), published first in Italian, followed shortly by Yiddish and English. In 1920 the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution took over these efforts, helping the Guide reach millions of immigrants in over a dozen different languages. These Guides reveal inherent biases against immigrants in the form of who the DAR believed could become Americans, the DAR’s fear of losing American values such as democracy and liberty from the influx of immigrants, while simultaneously revealing the role the American Revolution played in creating a national identity. The responses to the Guide from the public, government officials, and the DAR themselves indicate the conceived severity of the issue of immigration in the 1910s and 1920s and the DAR’s solution to the problem.