Today marks Kappa Alpha Theta’s 144th birthday. Whenever I see a tweet from @BettieLocke I wonder how the Thetas managed to make a 164-year-old woman so tech savvy. Seriously though, I have great admiration for Bettie Locke. I’ve included this selection from my dissertation. I think it shows how the early women’s fraternity chapters were founded. There were no rules and guidelines in those post-Civil War years. The women did what needed to be done to grow their organizations. My best wishes to Thetas the world over on their Founders’ Day.
In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie McReynolds Locke [Hamilton] was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision.
The daughter of Dr. John Wesley Locke, a mathematics professor, she was a formidable student. During her sophomore year, Locke received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with a dating arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When Locke declined the badge because it did not come with full membership rights and responsibilities, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter substituted a silver cake basket, inscribed with the Greek letters “Phi Gamma Delta.” With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi alumnus, and her brother William, a Phi Gamma Delta, Locke began plans to start her own fraternity. She and Alice Allen, another female in the first coeducational Asbury class, studied Greek, parliamentary law and heraldry with an eye towards founding a fraternity for women (Wilson, 1956).
On January 27, 1870, Locke stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Olive Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw]. Five weeks later, Mary Stevenson, a freshman, joined the group. Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. Contrary to popular belief the badge was not patterned after a kite. The original badge was intended to be “something near enough to the Phi Gamma Delta badge to suit Betty Locke and yet slenderized to give it individually” (Wilson, 1956, p. 5). The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870 (Shaw, 1918).
The constitution and by-laws written by the group reflected the desire of its founders “to afford an opportunity for improvement in composition, elocution, and debate” and the by-laws provide for “literary exercises” to consist of “dialogues, debates, declamations, essays, orations, select readings” and for a “public performance at such a time and in such a place and manner as the society may deem proper.” (Mecklin, 1918, p. 150)
Years later, an Alpha chapter member, Edna Rising (1920), wrote of visiting Allen, in whose home two of the Theta founders lived. Allen related that some male students did not want the females to enter any student activity and daubed mud on chapel seats, hung hoop skirts over the lights, and put silly signs up on campus.
Kappa Alpha Theta’s extension was quick. Locke’s father had a friend who was a trustee at Indiana University in Bloomington. The friend had a daughter, Minnie Hannamon, who was college age. In April, a letter was written to Hannamon, and Locke visited Bloomington in early May. On May 18, 1870, Locke installed Kappa Alpha Theta at Indiana University with the initiation of the three charter members, Hannamon, Lizzie Hunter and Lizzie Harbinson (Wilson, 1956). It was evidence of the policy outlined in the original constitution giving the mother chapter at Indiana Asbury University the power to establish other collegiate chapters (“Some history,” 1920).
The next three chapters were short-lived. In December of 1870, a chapter was established at Cincinnati Wesleyan University, an experiment that only lasted six months.[1] A chapter at Millersburg College, a women’s college in Kentucky lasted from April 13, 1871, through January 22, 1872, and one at Moore’s Hill College in Indiana lasted five years. According to Wilson (1956) Moore’s Hill College was the first Theta chapter to feel the pressure of faculty opposition as well as a limited number of women at the institution. In November of 1879, the corresponding secretary of the Alpha chapter read a letter from Fitch regarding the chapter at Moore’s Hill. Fitch replied that she thought the Moore’s Hill chapter records were destroyed when the boarding house in which they were kept burned down (“Side-lights,” 1918).
Northwestern Christian College, today known as Butler University, became home to the Indiana Delta chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta on February 27, 1874. When Kappa Alpha Theta changed the naming system of chapters, it became the Gamma chapter. Two members of the chapter at Indiana University, Teresa Luzadder Gregory and Laura Henly, assisted in the formation of the chapter. The chapter was inactive from February 25, 1886 through November 3, 1906 (Wilson, 1956).
The Epsilon chapter at Wooster College was known as Ohio Alpha when it was chartered on May 12, 1875. The chapter ceased to exist in 1913 when the college administration ordered all the fraternities to close (Dodge, 1930).
The second national convention was held in Indianapolis on May 14, 1875, with delegates from four chapters in attendance (“Some history,” 1920). Due to the efforts of several University of Indiana chapter members a chapter was founded on June 8, 1875, at Illinois Wesleyan College in Bloomington. It was known as Illinois Alpha. Twenty years later, when the determination was made that there were not enough fraternity-minded students to continue at Illinois Wesleyan, the charter was transferred to the chapter at the University of Illinois and the chapter became known as the Delta chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta.
Extension took a turn to the east when the Pennsylvania Alpha chapter at Allegheny College was formed in 1876. One of the Alpha chapter members had an uncle on the faculty at Allegheny College. He provided the names of four Allegheny College students and Flora Tingley, the Alpha member, invited one of these women to Greencastle. On her visit to Greencastle, Augusta Densmore was initiated into the Alpha chapter. She initiated the three others when she returned to Meadville. All but one were seniors and the chapter disbanded the next year. Four years later, in 1881, it was reinstalled as Mu chapter (Wilson, 1956).
The four Kappa Alpha Theta Founders
[1] The chapter was revived as the Alpha Tau chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta in 1913 (Wilson, 1956).
From Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902, Frances DeSimone Becque, Dissertation, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2002.
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
