THE sea once brought all to Bermuda. Ships, goods, disease, people and news of the world all came thus in the days before radio and aeroplanes.

For some who came but temporarily, Bermuda was the last stop and many were the soldiers of British forces who are to be found in local cemeteries, far from their homes overseas. Families have probably never visited most of these final resting places, due to the constraints of travel in the days of sail, and the loss of memory as generations pass.

Among the military graves at St. Peter's Church in St. George's is that of an American patriot and lately the Daughters came to honour that lady of Philadelphia. She was Anne Willing Bingham, said to be the most beautiful woman of her time.

They are the Daughters of the American Revolution, perhaps the most powerful ladies' organisation in the United States, with influence reaching around the world through overseas chapters. The purpose of such a visit is to acknowledge and respect the dead and their connection with us in the present. This includes a retelling of who they were and what our relation is to them.

The descendant daughters of patriots of the American Revolution own a city block of outstanding buildings in the nation's capital, appropriately at 1776 D Street. Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution must be able to prove lineal descent from a Patriot of the 1776-1783 struggles for Independence from Britain.

To this end, the institution maintains an outstanding genealogical archive that, if you are female, you may search to see if you have the bona fides to become a member. My mother was an American so she might have qualified, but I understand, being of the male category, that I need not apply.

The organisation was founded on October 11, 1890, as that was the anniversary day of the discovery of the Americas by Columbus in 1492 and because a very determined woman, the Spanish Queen Isabella, made the discovery possible, in the view of the Daughters.

The goals of the DAR are to promote historic preservation, education and patriotism. The visit to the grave of Anne Willing Bingham was but one of many thousand acts of the DAR, at home and abroad, to assist in the preservation of evidence of American patriots.

In this vein, the Daughters have donated millions of dollars to restoration projects, such as the Statue of Liberty and the nearby haunting Ellis Island, New York, through which passed the ancestors of many present American families.

The DAR restored the whole upper floor of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and built the Pilgrim Memorial Fountain to honour the women of the Mayflower in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They have also supported the archaeological work at Jamestown, Virginia, where the European settlement of what became the United States began in 1607. Millions of dollars have been devoted over the decades to education via scholarships and support for schools, in particular for Native Americans.

The Somers Isles Chapter of the DAR, led by Regent Ann Gibbs of Tucker's Town, hosted President General Presley Merritt Wagoner and Vice President General and Chairman of Units Overseas, Joy Cardinal, during their visit. The Reverend W. David Raths, Rector of St. Peter's, officiated at the graveyard ceremony and the then Mayor, E. Michael Jones, took the visitors on a tour of the Old Towne.

WHILE the Somers Isles Chapter is one of the youngest in the DAR, the visitors were reminded that Bermuda has perhaps the longest connection with the United States, from the time that Admiral Sir George Somers sailed there from here in the Patience and Deliverance in the summer of 1610 with a food cargo of wild pigs and salted cahows for the starving colonists at Jamestown.

According to the headstone restored in 1883 by her relative Edward Willing, Anne was the daughter of Thomas Willing of Philadelphia and was born in 1764. At the age of 16, she married Senator William Bingham, possibly the wealthiest man in America, owning at one time more than a million acres of the state of Maine.

They spent some years in Europe and it was there that Anne contracted an illness, for which Bermuda was prescribed as a place of cure. Unfortunately, a cure was not to be had and she died here in her 37th year on May 11, 1801.

Anne Willing Bingham's reputation and fame yet survives, for she is supposed to have been the model for the famous Draped Bust portrait on the obverse of the American silver dollars and other United States coinage between 1796 and 1804.

While the evidence is circumstantial, the famous artist Gilbert Stuart made a portrait of Anne in 1785, when she was 21 years old. From that sketch, the "Miss Liberty" of the Draped Bust coins was probably created.

MORE than a million Draped Bust silver dollars were produced over an eight-year period and they remain some of the most prized coins for collectors today. It is said that for a time, every American would have had an Anne Willing Bingham coin in his or her pocket.

Now, of course, Anne is part of an international legacy as she lies within the curtelage of St. Peter's at the centre, physically and spiritually, of St. George's, Bermuda's World Heritage town.

World heritage is a new type of coinage, a currency from the past for the future. Anne is now a part of our heritage: we should honour and preserve the tangible evidence of her at the outstanding monument that is St. Peter's Church.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion and not necessarily those of the Trustees or Staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 734-1298.