The reason--they hadn't seen The Heiress in some time, and they wanted to. Also, my FIL has been doing some research on Ancestry.com . . .
. . . and what he had shocked me. It turns out that his family has been in the Mohawk Valley since, oh, about 1720 or so. Ever heard of the Battle of Oriskany during the Revolutionary War? Turns out that my FIL's line was on both sides of that one. One of his great- . . . -great-uncles was the commander of the American forces there. Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer. My FIL was able to trace his family tree to a sister of Herkimer's. If you read anything on the battle, it was one of the bloodiest in the Revolution. Boiled down, a fort around Rome (FT Stanwix) was under siege, and General Herkimer was trying to relieve the fort. He got ambushed along the way (6 Aung 1777), but the Seneca warriors with the Tories popped the ambush too early. Anyway, 150 of the 800 Americans were unhurt at the end of the battle. But, during the battle, the commander of FT Stanwix (Colonel Peter Gansevoort) sent out a raiding party which overran and pillaged the Senecas' camp, so they deserted the Tories. General Herkimer had to have his leg amputated as a result of a wound sustained in the battle, and died 11 days later (16 Aug 1777). We're trying to get a roster of just who fought there on the American side. I'm pretty sure that we can get both my wife and my daughter into the DAR based on this.
There will be more to follow, as supposedly, I've got some ancestors on my mother's side who fought on the American side in the Revolution. But that's another day . . .