The Melicent Porter Chapter DAR of Waterbury was formed in 1893, and the Sarah Whitman Trumbull Chapter DAR of Watertown was organized in 1904. On April 17, 1998, the Trumbull-Porter Chapter DAR was formed from the merger of these two chapters. Our membership of over 120 members comes from a wide area: Beacon Falls, Bethany, Bethlehem, Middlebury, Naugatuck, Newtown, Oakvile, Southbury, Thomaston, Waterbury, Watertown, Wolcott, Woodbury, as well as other states and countries.
Our chapter’s namesakes
Melicent Porter
Melicent Porter, born 16 November 1750, in Waterbury, Connecticut, was not only the daughter of an officer in the American Revolution and the wife of another, but rendered patriotic service in her own right. The daughter of Col. Jonathan Baldwin and his wife Mary Bronson, Melicent lived in the family home near the center of town on East Main Street.
At the age of twenty she married Isaac C. Lewis and went with him to New Jersey to reside. At the time of the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, Melicent, then a widow with two small children, labored all day cooking for the soldiers of Washington’s army.
After the battle, Melicent Baldwin Lewis returned to Waterbury where she married Major Phineas Porter on 23 December 1778. Major Porter was later commissioned Colonel of the 28th Militia Regiment of Connecticut. After Colonel Porter’s death in 1808, she married Abel Camp. Melicent Baldwin (Lewis) (Porter) Camp died in Plymouth, Connecticut, on 27 December 1824, and is buried in nearby Morris.
*NEXUS, Vol. XV, Nos. 3 & 4, May-August 1998, pp 105-108
also: Whitman Genealogy and Sarah Whitman Trumbull Chapter notes
Sarah Whitman
Sarah Whitman was born on 12 March 1717/18, in Farmington, Connecticut, the daughter of Rev. Samuel Whitman and his wife Sarah Stoddard. When on 4 July 1744, she married Rev. John Trumbull of Westbury (now Watertown), she followed in the footsteps of her mother, and her grandmother by marrying a minister.
Sarah Whitman Trumbull was the mother of 8 children; her son John is known as “the Poet of the Revolution” because of his works, among them McFingal. It is said that Sarah taught her children herself, and so well did she do it that her son John was ready to enter Yale College at the age of 7 years. She was in every respect a superior woman.
Sarah Whitman Trumbull died at the age of 87, on 24 March 1805, at the home of her daughter, Sarah Perkins, in West Hartford.
*NEXUS, Vol. XV, Nos. 3 & 4, May-August 1998, pp 105-108
also: Whitman Genealogy and Sarah Whitman Trumbull Chapter notes