Our Chapter History

The Chickasaw Bluff Chapter, NSDAR, was organized in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, on June 25, 1958, and confirmed by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Continental Congress on October 15, 1958.

The organizing regent was Ruth Malcolm Fleming with thirty-two charter members. Ellen Davies Rodgers, State Regent, Tennessee Society Daughters of the American Revolution (TSDAR), administered the oath of office to the chapter membership and installed the chapter officers.

The chapter was named for the fourth Chickasaw Bluff which was just below the Wolf River. Downtown Memphis sits on a bluff that overlooks the Mississippi River.

Memphis’ first inhabitants were Native American Indians who lived along the wooded bluffs above the Mississippi River as early as 10,000 years ago. A thousand years before foreign explorers entered the region, Chickasaw Indians controlled the bluffs. These Indians came to be known as Mound Builders, for the massive mounds they built that now overlook the Mississippi River by DeSoto Park.

The first European to view the Mississippi was the Spaniard explorer Hernando DeSoto, who crossed the river near what is now the City of Memphis in 1541. Around a hundred years later French explorers Fathers Marquette and Joliet sailed down the river through Memphis. Sieur de LaSalle would later follow and build Fort Prudhomme around 1682. In 1739, the French built a garrison, Fort Assumption.

After the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, England gained control of the bluffs although the area was Chickasaw by treaty. The Indians, French, English, Spanish, and new “Americans” coexisted along the river trading and skirmishing until Tennessee became a United States territory in 1790, and then a state in 1796. Although this land legally belonged to the Chickasaw Indians, the new settlers would eventually take it over. In 1818, the Chickasaws relinquished their northern territory, including the land that would become the City of Memphis.