In April 2006, Shari Worrell was asked by Betsy K. Jones, Organizing Secretary General, to organize a Branch of the National Society in Illinois. Word quickly spread about this new branch and the first organizing meeting was held on 28 August 2006 in Downers Grove, IL with 19 members and prospective members in attendance.
At this meeting, officers were elected and bylaws were written. Two additional meetings have been held, and we currently have over 40 members, including 2 junior members.
Representatives met in Washington DC on April 16, 2007 to where we became officially chartered. This was celebrated at our Chartering Luncheon on May 7, 2007.
We appreciate your interest in the Illinois Branch, National Society Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims. Men or women over the age of 18 are eligible to join our Society, without regard to religion or place of origin, if he or she is a direct descendent of a "Pilgrim". That term denotes any immigrant who settled before 1700 within the territory which later became the forty-eight contiguous states of the United States of America. We also welcome junior members with the same ancestry, who are not yet 18.
For more information on joining us, please contact our Registrar.
- Philanthropic, religious, educational, and scientific;
- To perpetuate the memory, and to foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Pilgrims;
- To commemorate publicly at stated times principal events in the history of the Pilgrims, and to erect durable memorials to historic men, women, and events;
- To encourage the study and research of Pilgrim history, especially as related to the foundation of civil government on the principles of religious freedom;
- To foster and establish such departments of study and of organization as shall seem best to promote social rights, civic virtue, industrial freedom, political equality, the supremacy of just laws, the value and sacredness of the ballot, the purity of the home, temperate and godly living, and the dependence of individuals, communities, states and nations on the guidance of Almighty God, as taught by the Pilgrims.
JosefaLee Hammond