OUR MISSION 

Members of Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter, NSDAR, support our local community through various projects.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter, NSDAR, has sponsored DAR Historic Preservation Grants in historical preservation for restoration projects that were granted to the Santiam Heritage Foundation for restoration of the historic Charles and Martha Brown House in Stayton, Oregon, and to the Santiam Historical Society for digitization of early Stayton newspapers.  These newspapers are now available to the public online​.

PROMOTION OF EDUCATION

Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter, NSDAR, believes literacy is important to a child's future. The chapter financially supports our local children's reading program at the Stayton Library.  Members provide volunteer support, and are donors to the Stayton Library Foundation.  We donate to the OSSDAR literacy committee book drives, and sponsor literacy events on the Constitution to local elementary schools to promote Constitution Week.  

PATRIOTIC ENDEAVOR

Supporting our local veterans is a priority for our chapter.  For National DAR Day of Service, we bake treats for our local law enforcement, fire departments, and veterans groups. The chapter bundles greeting cards to be sent to active duty military. We also collect needed items for the Edward C. Allworth Veterans Home in Lebanon, Oregon, and for Canyon Crisis Center, a local Veterans assistance group.
Celebrating Veterans Day by participating in the Albany, Oregon, Veterans Day Parade with other area chapters is always an inspiration and a reminder of the sacrifices and service of our military veterans. 
For more information on how to become a member of DAR, email our chapter or you can click the contact us link up above to send us a message. We would love to hear from you. 

About
Abigail Scott Duniway
​1834-1915
Our namesake is Abigail Scott Duniway. Abigail was born on October 22, 1834, near Groveland, Illinois. Abigail Jane Scott traveled over the Oregon Trail by wagon train with her family in 1852, when she was just seventeen. She had little formal schooling, but was a capable writer whose assigned task during the journey was to keep the family trail diary.

After arriving in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, Jenny, as the family called her, began teaching school near the present-day community of Eola. At age 18, she married, but even then was spunky enough to have the word “obey” omitted from the wedding vows. Her husband, Ben Duniway, a gentle, supportive, understanding man, had not married within two years of arriving in the territory, so was ineligible to claim additional land for his wife under the rules of the Donation Land Act. The new Mrs. Duniway, ever the independent, had refused to file a claim herself because she didn’t want anyone marrying her for her land.

​Writing the trail diary had ignited something in the young woman. Despite being swamped with household duties, farm chores, and the never-ending responsibilities of being a wife and mother to three preschoolers, she needed more. She needed to write. So, she wrote. Abigail Scott Duniway, as she eventually signed her work, submitted numerous poems and articles to local newspapers. In 1857, she wrote the first novel to be commercially published in Oregon. Her fictionalized tale of a family’s wagon-train journey to Oregon showed a strong awareness of the inequalities faced by American women. She never deviated from including that viewpoint in her future work, either.​
By 1871, Abigail established her own newspaper, the New North West. Its motto was “Free Speech, Free Press, Free People.” Abigail was the family breadwinner now. Ben had been disabled in an accident, but he was able to perform many household duties for her, becoming a prototype Mr. Mom.

Abigail had great marketing skills. She promoted women’s rights, but was canny enough to recognize that the paper had to appeal to many people to keep circulation in the black, so she featured cliff-hanger serialized stories that she authored, along with what could be considered a forerunner of the Dear Abby advice column, something similar to Heloise’s household tips, and commentaries on current events. 

​To stimulate circulation, she hired people to sell subscriptions and rewarded them with tiered prize levels – something we still see today.​
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Women’s suffrage became her cause. She lobbied across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho for women's right to vote. She brought Susan B. Anthony and other nationally known suffragists to Oregon. She angered the Temperance movement by declaring that tying women’s suffrage to temperance would be counterproductive. Five times she lobbied the Oregon Legislature to put women’s suffrage to a vote. Four times it was defeated, quite possibly because the temperance movement remained firmly identified with women's right to vote.

Finally, in 1912, the tide had turned, and Abigail Scott Duniway was honored by becoming the first Oregon woman registered to vote in a national election.

In 1914, she cast the first ballot in such an election here. A forty-two-year battle was won. Abigail Scott Duniway had changed her world for the better, not only for herself but for all women. On October 11, 1915, a few days before her eighty-first birthday, she died in a Portland, Oregon, hospital. For further reading on Abigail Scott Duniway and her life, you can visit the​ website Oregon Encyclopedia​.

Our Patriot Ancestor List

Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter, NSDAR is proud to currently have Patriots, from ten of the thirteen colonies, including a female patriot. For more information on how to become a member of DAR, email our chapter, or you can click the contact us link up above to send us a message. We're pleased to introduce new members to the NSDAR and its many ways of strengthening our communities and nation.
Connecticut
Amos Merriman
Benjamin Peck
Consider Law
Daniel Knowlton
Gamaliel Reynolds
Jonathan Sprague
Joseph Worden
Reuben Hosford​
​Peter Post
​Georgia
​Solomon Palmer
Massachusetts
​William Betts
John Keith
William Knapp
​Ebenezer Bartlett
​William Franklin 
Arthur and Nehemiah Latham 
​Maryland
Robert Morgan Roberts
​Edward Parrish
                     Timothy Ragan                                     
North Carolina
Nicholas Grindstaff
Issac Wright
​Early Albertson
​Jacob Wagner Jr.

New Hampshire
Zachariah Jenks
New Jersey
Philip Condit, Sr.
John Hayman Krom
John Rosencrans
Joseph Beavers
Edward Hunt
New York
Joshua Bishop
Frederick Kast
​Cyprian Watson ​
Pennsylvania
John Knowles 
Nicholas Deisinger
John Evans, Sr.
Robert Smith
​Frederick Emert 
Adam Brown
Virginia
Susannah Wallace Woods
John Bollman
George Carter
Walter Crockett
William Devin, Jr.
Robert Harris
William Lester
Michael O'Hair
John O'Loughlin
Godfrey Daniel Stout
Edward Wooldridge, Sr.
Josiah Wooldridge
Fiatt Wysong
​Adam Brown
Vermont
Jesse Burk
Nathan Guile
Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter, NSDAR
Stayton, Oregon
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the NSDAR. Hyperlinks to other sites are not the responsibility of the NSDAR, the state organizations or individual DAR chapters.

Photos taken by chapter members are used with their permission. Photo Credit: Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
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Site Last Updated June 7, 2026