Jackie Quigley, chapter leader of the Arlington House chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, sprays distilled water on a gravestone at the Walker Chapel Historic Cemetery and carefully scrubs off the lichen with a soft brush. “Oct. 11 is the anniversary of the founding of the DAR in 1890 so all of the chapters have a service project. So our chapter chose cleaning gravestones at the historic Walker Chapel Cemetery.” DAR is a lineage-based non-profit service organization for women who are directly descended from a patriot of the American Revolutionary War.

Larry Danforth, supervisor of the Cemetery and a trustee at Walker Chapel United Methodist Church where the graveyard is located, has pointed out some gravestones to get the DAR members started. Danforth says there are 630 burials with 1100 gravesites at the Walker Chapel Cemetery. “You have to be a member of the church. But my goal for the last 7 years is to open the Cemetery to the public, and now we have 330 niches in our new columbarium and these are open to the public. The area will be dedicated on Nov. 3.”

Quigley continues, “This is a pretty interesting project. DAR is big into education, patriotism and historical preservation.” She points to a clean gravestone nearby. “Shipman is mostly done — it makes a big difference.” 

Some of the gravestones are very old and get covered with lichen and eroded by pollution. Quigley explains, in addition, people used to do wax rubbings of the stones which was damaging. 

Marianne Okal says her gravestone for Sarah Virginia Elliott is shaping up after working on it for nearly an hour. “And if we are able to clean it off, the descendants could actually read it.” She has put her finger carefully in the curve of the number etched into the stone to determine Sarah died in 1923, not 1928. After all that careful work, “My water bottle is completely used up. I’ll have to go refill.” She walks around to the back of the obelisk. “This design up here looks like it might be flowers. This is a lovely obelisk.” She estimates it will probably take another hour to finish it off. 

Quigley says the Day of Service is really important to the DAR. “Service is at the foundation of the DAR.” Quigley says the chapter does a lot of community projects including weeding at Arlington House and working on literacy with RAFF. 

Members also recently participated in a naturalization ceremony for 16 new citizens at the Alexandria Courthouse. In addition, the chapter gives out annual medals to the best history student identified by the teachers at Williamsburg Middle School and Arlington Traditional. “They're kind of a nice medal, too,” Quigley adds.

Nearby Sharla Rausch, DAR chapter reporting secretary, is working on James E. Cornwell who was born in 1859 and died in 1923. Next to him is Sarah Cornwell born in 1860 and died in 1948. Beside them is a granddaughter who was born in 1964 and died a month later in June. Down the row is a whole line of other members of the Cornwell family. Rausch says the cemetery is intermingled with plots of families who married each other. 

Rausch likes to speculate on the lives of the people in the cemetery. “We don’t want anyone’s story to be lost.” She points to another stone. “This one is making me curious. He was 33 years old and died in 1917. I wonder if it was the influenza. I have to see if they have records.” Rausch says that some cemeteries have been well documented digitally but others haven’t made a record and when the stones have eroded, the information will be lost.

Quigley says their DAR chapter meets on the second Saturday of the month at the Northeastern University in Rosslyn. “I haven’t seen a better view of Arlington. Our current chapter has 84 members and we are always looking for people. We are always willing to help people look for documentation if they think they have a revolutionary connection.” Quigley says her ancestor is Simion Howard who was from Connecticut. “We have a chapter member we think was in the same community and they fought together. That is pretty neat.”