Since the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) in 1890, the National Society has published Lineage Books containing abstracts of the pedigrees of their members. By the year 1940, some 160 volumes of Lineage Books, each containing one thousand lineages, had been published. Nevertheless, it was necessary to consult as many as 160 separate indexes in order to extract complete data on a Revolutionary ancestor and his descendants. Recognizing the need for a more convenient key to the lineages, therefore, the DAR, between 1916 and 1940, condensed the names of 50,000 Revolutionary ancestors appearing in the various "Rolls of Honor" and the volume and page references concerning their 160,000 "Daughters" into a comprehensive four-volume index. With over 200,000 references, this Index (now reprinted in two large volumes), contains the greatest potential yield of Revolutionary ancestral information available in book form.