The first meeting of NSCDA-MN was in 1896. when a group of women gathered at the home of Helen Gilman Noyes in St. Paul.

Beginning in 1953, the Dames began supporting scholarships for International students at the University of Minnesota. They also acquired an interest in the Alexander Ramsey House via bequest of Anna Furness, and celebrated our nation’s bicentennial.

Elsie Thayer Rider and Georgia Ray Lindeke wrote a brief history of our first 100 years, while Marnie Hensel planned a trip to Virginia and the group took a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi.

The Minnesota Dames found new programs to support and new ways of operating as times changed in the 2000s.