P.E.O., a “philanthropic organization where women celebrate the advancement of women; educate women though scholarships, grants, awards, loans and stewardship of Cottey College; and motivate women to achieve their highest aspirations,” was founded as a collegiate organization on January 21, 1869. The seven founders – Franc Roads, Hattie Briggs, Mary Allen, Alice Coffin, Ella Stewart, Alice Bird and Suela Pearson – were students at Iowa Wesleyan University, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, one of the oldest institutions of higher education west of the Mississippi River.
The lore of P.E.O. tells of a rival organization which had been founded by an interloper from Monmouth, Illinois. Some, but not all, of a group of seven friends were asked to be members of I.C. Sorosis (now known by its Greek motto, Pi Beta Phi). The story goes that the arrows of I.C. were worn to a Beta Theta Pi gathering to celebrate the new year and there was a buzz among the group of women not wearing the arrow.
And although the stories about the founding of P.E.O. make it sound as if the two foundings took place within days of each other, they were founded a month apart – December 21, 1868 and January 21, 1869. The seven chose the star as the emblem of the sisterhood they called P.E.O.
Five of the seven women graduated in June of 1869 and one did not return the following fall as she was needed at home. Luckily the young women invited others to be members in the spring of 1869. One of these women was Lulu Corkhill. She was 14 at the time and a student at the preparatory school.
She said of those first meetings in Mount Pleasant:
Everything was of such vast importance, everything was so secret. When and where we held our meetings were of as much secrecy as was our oath. And for revealing an officer’s name – that would have been an offense worthy of expulsion. As I look back I can but smile as I recall how careful we were to go down side streets and double on our tracks, and separate ourselves into groups of one as we neared the place of meeting, lest any idle onlooker should detect more than one girl going into a house on the same afternoon and should guess that the P.E.O.s were having a meeting.
Lulu Corkhill Williams wearing her star in her hair.
In 1882, a P.E.O. convention, the second of that year, was held in the Methodist parsonage of Dr. Thomas E. Corkhill, in Bloomfield, Iowa. His daughter, Lulu, was convention hostess. The “Parlor Convention” was one of the most important in P.E.O.’s history. She later reflected on that meeting:
As I have tried to recall early days, I have come to realize as never before, how really important our every day life is, and how much it means to those who come after us. We who were early P.E.O.s lived those days and did not think them of enough importance to write them down, and did not try to remember events, and how eagerly those records are sought today. Thus the small events of today may be the great things of tomorrow.
As a P.E.O. and as Pi Beta Phi’s Historian, I am well aware of the early rivalry between the two groups. In fact, there is a section of Pi Phi’s centennial history titled “Rivalry Between P.E.O. and I.C. Sorosis at Mount Pleasant.” According to the report, some of it taken from the Story of P.E.O. written by Winona Evans Reeves, the two groups were for years:
mortal foes yet each respected the steel of the other, for the societies were made up of much of the same type of girls. In Iowa Wesleyan they couldn’t even belong to the same literary societies; they had two societies in later years. The two boys’ fraternities (Beta Theta Pi, founded 1868, Phi Delta Theta, founded 1871 and perhaps Delta Tau Delta active 1875-80) had to be very careful in the way they divided their dates and their attentions.
Therefore, I was quite surprised to run across a page in a 1914 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi. It was an obituary for Emma Kate Corkhill. Before I read it, I wondered if she was somehow related to Lulu Corkhill Williams. Lulu, the P.E.O., did indeed have a sister who was a Pi Phi. Both were initiates of the chapters at Iowa Wesleyan. Emma Kate graduated in 1889 and 1892; she earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s. She taught at her Alma Mater for a year, at Simpson College for seven years, and at Lawrence University for the remainder of her life.
Kate Corkhill. Note her arrow on the collar.
When Emma Kate died in a Chicago hospital on December 13, 1913, her funeral services were in Mount Pleasant. Her Pi Beta Phi sisters:
met the family at the station and opened rank, at the church while the funeral cortege passed through both on entering and leaving the church. Warm tears were on many faces for this gifted woman had an especial place in many hearts among those who had known her from her childhood.
It was noted by one of the members of her chapter that Emma Kate’s “place in the faculty of Lawrence, her place in her sister’s (Lulu’s) home, her place in Pi Beta Phi will long remain a vital tribute to her worth as a woman of heart, of intellect and of true spirituality.”
Emma Kate Corkhill is buried with her parents in a Mount Pleasant cemetery.
Lulu and her husband Hemmerle “H.B.” Williams moved to Evanston, Illinois, and spent most of their lives there. She was instrumental in the founding of the Illinois State Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. The Lulu Corkhill Williams Friendship Fund honors her. The fund assists Illinois residents, both men and women, who are in need of temporary assistance.
Happy Founders’ Day to my P.E.O. sisters!
