On October 18, 1890, the NSDAR Insignia and Seal Committee reported that the design for the first DAR seal should be "the figure of Abigail Adams in the costume of 1776 seated at a spinning wheel;" however the committee reported on November 11, 1890, that it should be "charged with the figure of a dame sitting at her spinning wheel."

        The Committee chairman, Mrs. G. Brown Goode, took the design to her husband, Dr. G. B. Goode, who was the Chairman of the Advisory Board and assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. After carefully studying the design, he was able to make a most unique emblem for the Daughters of the American Revolution. It reminded him of the spinning wheel of his grandmother, Rebecca Hayes Goode of Amelia County, Virginia, who had done her part for the American Revolution while seated at her spinning wheel. However his grandmother's old spinning wheel had been made sometime between 1775 and 1825 and had fourteen spokes, but Dr. Goode decided to use only thirteen spokes to represent each of the thirteen colonies.

        The first DAR Seal showed a lady dressed in a 1776 period costume, seated at her spinning wheel, with the motto, "Amour Patriae," meaning "Our Love of Our Country."  The motto was approved and accepted at the first Continental Congress on February 22, 1892, but was changed in 1972 to "God, Home and Country."

        For its insignia pin, the DAR uses only the wheel of the spinning wheel, which has been described as: "the gold wheel over a distaff filled with platinum flax, the wheel with thirteen spokes, having opposite the end of each a star intended for the reception of a jewel," which included a rim with letters of gold on blue enamel with the words, "Daughters of the American Revolution."