General Federation of Women's Clubs Pioneer Daughters Collection

The Pioneer Daughters Collection (H97-056) is the result of a statewide GFWC effort to collect and preserve the stories of female pioneers in South Dakota. Arranged by county, married name, and maiden name, this collection of nearly 6,000 stories is the largest body of womens histories in the State Archives.

Digitization of the Pioneer Daughters Collection was made possible by the Mary Chilton Chapter, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution through the Mary Chilton DAR Foundation. Because of this organization's contribution, the collection is now available on the South Dakota Digital Archives.

Aurora-Buffalo County - Box 6828
Butte-Haakon County - Box 6829
Hamlin-Lawrence (F) County - Box 6830
Lawrence (G) - Moody County - Box 6831
Pennington-Ziebach County - Box 6832

Beginning in the 1940s, Marie Drew, chair of the Pioneer Daughters Collection, began the work of gathering biographies of female pioneers of South Dakota. Her efforts, garnered a collection of some 6,000 stories of the Great Plains.

The collected biographies include women of various social standing and ethnic background who lived in South Dakota during the first half of the twentieth century. A small portion of the entries also include photographs. Some of the collections only contain an obituary.

County List
Maiden Name
Married Name