BROWNWOOD – October 3, 2017 – Brownwood’s Mary Garland Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution held its recent meeting in Howard Payne University’s Independence Hall with HPU students and faculty among the guest speakers.
David Clemons, HPU instructor of history, spoke to the organization about two modern schools of thought on the American Revolution. Following his presentation, HPU seniors Carrie Condra of Hurst and Skyler Schoolfield of Aledo addressed the audience. Condra and Schoolfield, both students in HPU’s Guy D. Newman Honors Academy, are the recipients of the Lottie Plummer Wooley Texas Society Daughters of the American Revolution (TXDAR) Scholarship and the Nan Massengill TXDAR Scholarship, respectively.
HPU’s Independence Hall, located in the Douglas MacArthur Academy Building, was an apt setting for the meeting, held in observance of Constitution Week. The room is an almost-exact replica of the room in which the nation’s Founding Fathers signed the two key documents of American freedom: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Doris Goacher, digital archives assistant at HPU, serves as regent of the Mary Garland Chapter. She described how the chapter’s history intertwines with that of HPU.
“A charter member of the chapter was Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Peacock Walker, whose home, the Walker House, is now the home of Dr. Bill Ellis, HPU president, and his wife, Dr. Diana Ellis,” she said. “HPU’s Walker Memorial Library is named after Mrs. Walker’s husband, James Allen Walker.”
Additionally, Lottie Plummer Wooley and Nan Massengill, for whom the two HPU DAR scholarships are named, both have HPU connections as well.
“Mrs. Wooley, a Texas State Regent from 1967-1970, selected as her State Regent’s Project a contribution to the completion of Constitution Hall at the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom at HPU,” said Goacher.
Constitution Hall, a lecture hall on the third floor of the Academy building, was named in honor of the DAR’s Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
“The Texas Daughters were able to raise more money than was needed for the project, so the State Conference of 1970 established a scholarship at HPU, in Mrs. Wooley’s honor, with the remaining funds,” Goacher said.
According to Goacher, Cornelia “Nan” Massengill was State Treasurer during Wooley’s administration.
“She visited HPU several times with Mrs. Wooley and liked what the university stood for,” Goacher said. “She requested in her will that a DAR scholarship be established at this university.”
For more information about the Daughters of the American Revolution organization, visit www.dar.org.
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Cutlines:
David Clemons, instructor of history at HPU, addressed the Mary Garland Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at the chapter’s recent meeting held in HPU’s Independence Hall.
Carrie Condra, HPU senior from Hurst, is the recipient of the Lottie Plummer Wooley Texas Society Daughters of the American Revolution (TXDAR) Scholarship.
Skyler Schoolfield, HPU senior from Aledo, is the recipient of the Nan Massengill TXDAR Scholarship.