Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois on October 13, 1870. Its six founding members walked into chapel wearing small golden keys in their hair. The Alpha chapter was disbanded by the mid 1870s when Monmouth College forbid the existence of fraternities, although there is evidence the some of the organizations maintained sub rosa chapters for several years. It is a testament to the strength of the organization that it, along with its Monmouth Duo partner, Pi Beta Phi, continued to grow and succeed despite the demise of the Alpha chapter a few years after the founding.
Earlier this year, Jeff Rankin, Monmouth College’s Historian, sent me something he found in his email folder. It was written by J. Richard Sayre, Monmouth College Librarian who retired at the end of the spring semester. Sayre wrote:
While reading through some of the Faculty Minutes from the 1880s for a trustee, I ran across a series of faculty meetings from May 1882 in which the faculty passed a resolution calling for the immediate resignation of Miss Lizzie Gowdy, Art Instructor. Miss Gowdy was apparently observed by the faculty as sporting a Kappa Kappa Gamma pin on her blouse or jacket which was in violation of the college’s ‘well-defined’ policy concerning ‘secret fraternities’ on campus.
Although the Greek letter societies were officially banned in 1874, some of them existed sub rosa through the early 1880s. Sayre wrote:
However, young Lizzie Gowdy, former student, now art instructor, proudly wore her Kappa pin on a regular basis in defiance of college policies, and refused to resign when pressured by the MC faculty. Because of Gowdy’s refusal to resign voluntarily, the matter was referred by the faculty to the board of trustees, where, according to Urban’s History of Monmouth College(p.82), Miss Gowdy was eventually dismissed.
Gowdy left Monmouth and went on to further study at other art schools including Cooper Union. She married and Elizabeth Gowdy Baker made a name for herself in the art world. She painted a full length watercolor portrait of Tade Hartsuff Kuhns, a Butler University Kappa who served as Kappa’s first Grand President (1881-84). Kuhns was a world traveler, and in 1930, the New York Sun named her one of the world’s most widely traveled women. In 1912, Gowdy and Kuhns were members of the New York Association of Kappa alumnae.
Gowdy died in 1927.
