Journey through the American Revolution
with the American Battlefield Trust and DAR to host a free traveling exhibit at the East Tennessee History Center in Knox County.
The exhibit, American Revolution Experience, is open to the public and will be available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., from Tuesday, June 30, to Tuesday, July 7, in the center, 601 S. Gay St., Knoxville. The center is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
“It’s on loan from the American Battlefield Trust,” DAR chapter member Eve Thomas said. “It is a nine-panel display of the battles of the Revolutionary War. It will show all the relevant battles.
The chapter is named after the American Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Frazier.
“This is all in celebration of the America 250,” she said. “It’s also important to us chapters in Tennessee because were it not for Tennessee sending the most volunteers in the War of 1812, there would be no America 250.
“It’s not just an orange T-shirt,” Thomas added. “It’s a one-of-a-kind exhibit. There’s nothing else like it.”
The exhibit came about after DAR regent, Ann Haston, received an email about it and “asked us if we were willing to volunteer to go pick it up outside of Nashville and get volunteers to put it together.
About the chapter being asked, “We do a lot of volunteer hours as a chapter,” Thomas said. The DAR is expected to volunteer for veterans, for any kind of community cleanup, like at the lakes, so when it came to the history involved in this, I think they picked this as a natural choice because we are about history.
“We are the preservation of history,” she said. “All of us [members] do descend lineally from the first patriots in America.
“Do you realize this is documented to the first patriots of America?" Thomas asked. “Not necessarily soldiers, like Kings Mountain — that’s a big battle in Tennessee — but many people are eligible lineally into this organization because their ancestors paid the war tax or their ancestor was a slave and was with the white soldier. [DAR membership eligibility] is way more inclusive than it used to be.
“We no longer vote on whether somebody can join,” she said. “if they can prove lineal descent, they’re eligible to join.”
For example, “It may not be a soldier,” Thomas said. “I have a seventh great-grandfather who started the very first Baptist church in Virginia in 1770.
“He had a mill,” she said. “He gave grain to the troops.”
Still, in setting up the exhibit, “Most of our husbands, we don’t like to task them,” Thomas said. “They’re all late-60s, late-70s, [but] I have two grandsons, so I’m popular.
“So, everyone who has a granddaughter or grandson who’s strong is going to help set this up,” she added. “It does require a lot of volunteers — hint, volunteer state.
The event is free, but “the only thing people will be involved with is parking,” Thomas said.
She observed involvement in projects “is getting more difficult here because of traffic. The volunteer things we do, we have to get there an hour early.”
