Shown during its “reconstruction” at City Park in 1910, the “Cooper Cabin” was being made home of the DAP’s collection of local history. Sunday, June 7 from 2-4 p.m. the DAP will celebrate Henry Cooper Day. This year, on that occasion, as a part of Celebrate America’s 250th, the DAP will host an Anti-Tea Party. For more details on this, other Anti-Tea Parties and more local 250th celebration events, see the events calendar at the website downtownpkb. (Photo provided)

“One of the oldest social organizations in the Ohio Valley, the Centennial Chapter, National Society Daughters of American Pioneers, was founded in 1899. Its creation centered around the need to recognize a landmark date that fascinated the citizens of Wood County in 1899 — the centennial anniversary of the founding of their county.

The idea for such a group possibly originated from two sources: The Women’s Centennial Association, started a few years before in Marietta to mark that proud city’s 1788 founding. It may well also have been fostered by the 1890 national appearance of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The DAP’s stated mission was to preserve its membership (open only to females as its name implies; men were only permitted full membership in the early 21st Century) was to safeguard the local pioneer heritage. This was to be done by genealogically tracing individual members’ lineage back to 1800 ancestry. The second goal was to maintain a permanent museum of local history relics.

The Centennial Chapter’s fledgling collection was to be open to the public. This would also act as an educational tool to ensure that both present and future generations would never forget their rough-hewn frontier heritage. To reinforce this ideal, the Daughter’s monthly meetings would be enhanced by history-themed presentations. This, in turn, was enhanced by a short-lived, but very valuable and interesting published journal entitled The Pioneer Daughter, which remains a priceless source for historians today.

All in all, the Centennial Chapter, nicknamed “the mother house,” served as the model for the birth of many offshoot DAP chapters, three in West Virginia and 39 others stretching all the way to California.

At first, without a designated home for its artifacts, the chapter was a migratory organization, catching as catch can what shelter they were offered. One of their temporary exhibition sites was the new Wood County courthouse.

But in 1910, this lack of a museum problem came to a happy end. Cooper family descendants donated their 1804 ancestral home, a sturdy, two-story log house standing at Mineral Wells. After being disassembled and relocated to Parkersburg’s newly established City Park, it still remains, 116 years later, one of the Ohio Valley’s oldest continually operated history museum structures.

Throughout the 1900s into the 21st Century, generation after generation of community-minded Pioneer Daughters worked hard to safeguard their city’s often elusive past.

As the Chapter grew in number, a junior organization appeared for children who often became the riders of the DAP floats featured in Parkersburg street parades.

However, following the Second World War, new times brought new ideas, which did not always encourage the former reverence for tradition. A cultural shift set in, which gradually, but steadily, lessened America’s interest in its genealogy and local history. This especially accelerated following the country’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration.

The NSDAP fell victim to this unfortunate sociological trend by suffering a rapid falling off of membership. Younger women no longer rose to fill the ranks. By 2000, the national rosters of chapters was reduced to the original three: Centennial [Parkersburg], Elizabeth Beauchamp [Elizabeth, WV]; and Thomas Ritchie [Ritchie Co.] (now disbanded).

In 2026, the Centennial Chapter, reduced to a handful of members, but retaining its pioneer spirit, is seeking new members to continue its long quest for the public to remember those brave women and men who gave their city birth.

Interested in becoming a member of the DAP?

Contact Bob Enoch at the email address below.

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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.