Sarah Josephine Meredith Langstaff was born to English parents in the Canadian town of St. Catherine’s, Ontario, on the 14th of April, 1849. As an infant, she was adopted by Bridgewater Meredith, an Oxford man of Magdalen College, and his American wife, Caroline Arnold of New Jersey. Josephine Meredith grew up in New Jersey and, in 1884, married Dr. John Elliot Langstaff, also a Canadian, and took up residence in the City of Brooklyn, New York.

Josephine Langstaff’s interest extended beyond her home. She had sympathy in her heart for the British people, and she realized that a group of British-born women in a foreign country, united in a common cause, could be a force for good, both for themselves and for the country in which they lived. This was the vision that culminated in her founding the DBE.

It was on a visit to Montreal that Josephine Langstaff became acquainted with the work of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire. So impressed was she by the aims and camaraderie of this Canadian-based organization that she proceeded to organize the DBE along similar lines in the United States. Thus, the Charter Chapter of the American organization, “King Edward VII,” was formed in New York on March 15, 1909.

From its inception, the organization grew rapidly, and Chapters were formed in numerous States. To achieve legal status as an American organization, an application was filed with the State of New York for a corporate charter. This was granted on December 8, 1910, under the name “Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire in the United States of America.”

All Chapters received their charters from the New York organization until 1919, when a more flexible type of administration was devised to give each state financial independence and local self-government. The plan provided that each State Society should be incorporated in its own State and subscribe to a National Covenant. All States proceeded with reorganizing, except the State of New York. On April 14, 1920, at a meeting held in Philadelphia, the Covenant was signed by representatives of the States of Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio, thus bringing the National Society Daughters of the British Empire in the United States of America into being.

Joining later were the States of New York, California, Washington, Indiana, Wisconsin, Alabama, Idaho, and Oregon, and later Tennessee, Maryland, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico, Missouri, Delaware, Texas, Hawaii, Virginia, Louisiana, Kansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, Northern California, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.