Alpha Xi Delta was founded at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois on April 17, 1893. Its founders are Cora Bollinger (Block), Alice Bartlett (Bruner), Bertha Cook (Evans), Harriett Luella McCollum (Gossow), Lucy W. Gilmer, Lewie Strong (Taylor), Almira Lowry Cheney, Frances Elisabeth Cheney, Eliza Drake Curtis (Everton), and Julia Maude Foster. At age 15, Alice Barlett Bruner was the youngest of Alpha Xi Delta’s founders; Eliza Curtis, a 25-year-old widow, was the oldest.
P.E.O. was founded as a collegiate organization at Iowa Wesleyan University on January 21, 1869. Between 1869 and 1902, the P.E.O. members who had been initiated while enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan University stayed active in the college chapter even though they were no longer enrolled in the college. Many remained in or near Mount Pleasant. Others formed chapters in towns and communities where they moved after graduation. The early P.E.O. chapters that had been formed at nearby schools did not survive and P.E.O.’s growth was in community chapters. The chapter at Iowa Wesleyan University was finding it difficult to operate on a college campus with the rules put forth by the community chapters.
The Alpha Xi Delta Chapter at Lombard, having made the decision to become a national organization, and the collegiate members of P.E.O., having decided to become a chapter of a Greek-letter organization, discussed the decisions that needed to be made on both sides if there was to be a resolution to these wishes.
Anna Gillis Kimble
Anna Gillis (Kimble), a member of the Alpha Xi Delta chapter at Lombard College, hailed from Mount Pleasant. Her influence helped the Iowa Wesleyan women make the decision to become the Beta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta. That event took place on June 9, 1902.
On June 24, 1902, Anna Gillis became the bride of Dr. Thaddeus Carey Kimble. While at Lombard College she was the editor of The Lombard Review, the college newspaper. She served as the first editor of The Alpha Xi Delta Journal (later named The Quill). She also served as Grand Historian and wrote four of the sorority’s early songs.
She was Alpha Xi Delta’s first delegate to what it today the National Panhellenic Conference. She attended the third Inter-Sorority Conference in 1904 and ended her printed report:
In closing, I wish to make a personal plea that the Pan-Hellenic idea be carried out in the spirit as well as in the letter that here, however, much there may be of social intercourse an enjoyment that a due consideration be afforded the broader interests of Sorority life and influence. To many the Sorority seems bounded by the chapter. Broaden your interests and your intelligence by an endeavor to widen the influence of your chapter to the limits of your sorority and beyond. To each of you, your sorority may be a very petty and unworthy thing or a very great and noble thing. As you will.
Dr. Kimble practiced medicine in Kansas and the couple had two daughters, Margie Kimble McCauley and Kathryn Kimble Butcher. Both were Alpha Xi initiates at Kansas State University. Anna Gillis Kimble was also a member of P.E.O., and at the time of her death in 1964, she was a member of Chapter FQ/Kansas.
