Delta Delta Delta was founded at Boston University on November 28, 1888. It fell on the day before Thanksgiving that year, just as it does in 2019. Founders’ Day is celebrated on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Its founders are Sarah Ida Shaw (Martin), Eleanor Dorcas Pond (Mann, M.D.), Florence Stewart and Isabel Breed.
In the fall of 1888, the four women seniors who had not joined any of the women’s fraternities then at Boston University (Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Phi, and Gamma Phi Beta) discussed their situation. Pond talked to Shaw and they decided to start a society of their own. Pond suggested that they use a triple Greek letter and Shaw chose the Greek letter Delta. Shaw and Pond threw themselves into the details associated with the founding, with Shaw masterminding most of it. All was finished by Tuesday of Thanksgiving week but the two met again on Wednesday afternoon. In the Philological Library at the top of the college building. Shaw and Pond embraced and said “Tri Delta is founded.”
Shaw and Pond were intent and ultimately successful in getting the other two unaffiliated seniors, Florence Stewart and Isabel Breed, to join their organization. All four are considered founders.
The second Tri Delta chapter came about through the efforts of Etta May Budd who was in Boston studying art. She boarded at the Young Women’s Christian Association and there met Josephine Centre, an early initiate of the Alpha Chapter. Budd, who then became a member of the Alpha Chapter, belonged to two local organizations, one at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and another at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
The organization Budd belonged to at Simpson College was called L.F.V. It stood for “Lovers of Fun And Victory,” but the college men called them “Light Footed Virgins.” L.F.V. was founded in 1871 and by 1889, it had 95 members. On April 25, 1889, nine L.F.V. members signed pledges to become members of Delta Delta Delta. A charter was secured and L.F.V. became the Delta Deuteron Chapter of Delta Delta Delta. An initiation followed on May 10, 1889. In 1897, it became known as the Delta chapter when the first national convention changed the system of naming chapters.
As she had done with the local organization to which she had belonged at Simpson College, Budd attempted to bring the local organization she had founded at Iowa State University, U.D.T. into the Delta Delta Delta fold. In May 1889, she returned to Iowa State with a charter for the local organization. There was much anti-fraternity sentiment on campus and U.D.T. had been forced to disband. Budd organized another group to have the Delta Delta Delta charter and was successful in 1890. However due to the continuing anti-fraternity sentiment, that charter was surrendered two years later. Fourteen members were initiated and two pledged before the charter was returned. Ultimately, the chapter was reestablished on September 21, 1912.
In 1889, the Epsilon chapter of Delta Delta Delta became the second women’s fraternity at Knox College. Kappa Beta Theta was a local organization founded in 1888 by sisters Patsie and Ola Ingersoll. It was formed with the intention of securing a charter from a national women’s fraternity. Beta Theta Pi had a chapter at Knox College and a Knox Beta told his brother, who was a member of the Beta Theta Pi chapter at Boston University. The Boston University Beta gave the information to his friend, Delta Delta Delta founder Sarah Ida Shaw.
Correspondence between Shaw and the Knox College women resulted in a Tri Delta charter being granted on July 9, 1889. A member of the Simpson College chapter, Hattie Berry, initiated the chapter in August 1889, at the home of one of the charter members, Alta March. A reception was held at the Phi Gamma Delta Hall at Knox College. Shaw later noted that the “Galesburg girls refused to have Gamma (as a chapter name) because they considered the letter hideous in form and sound, so it was given to the second in the province, Adrian (College), which came in only six months later.”
Tri Delta was represented at the 1891 meeting of seven organizations in Boston at the invitation of Kappa Kappa Gamma. When the seven groups met again in 1902 in Chicago at the invitation of Alpha Phi, Tri Delta became a founding member of the National Panhellenic Conference.
