On January 21, 1869, the P.E.O. Sisterhood was founded by seven young women. They were among the 85 or so collegiate level students enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan University. Legend has it that some, but not all of the seven had been asked by Libbie Brook to join the new chapter of I.C. Sorosis (now known by its Greek motto, Pi Beta Phi). On that unseasonably warm January day, Franc Roads and Hattie Briggs were sitting on the steps of a wooden stile at the southeast entrance to the campus and made the decision to start a society of their own. They gathered five others, Mary Allen, Ella Stewart, Alice Bird, Alice Coffin, and Suela Pearson, and took the 35-word oath that Alice Bird had written.
Many P.E.O.s think these seven had a hand in all that is done in P.E.O. today. When someone says that they want to do things exactly as the founders did in 1869, I usually chuckle to myself. The initiation ceremony and the meeting procedures, save for those 35 words that Alice Bird wrote in 1869, have been created over the past 151 years,
Five of the seven founders graduated in June, six months after the founding. Ella Stewart did not graduate because she was needed at home. Suela Pearson, the sophomore among the seven, could have hardly kept the organization going by herself in the fall of 1869. Luckily a few others had become members. After Suela graduated, she moved to Cleveland and had little opportunity to interact with P.E.O.s. Hattie died in 1877, Alice Coffin in 1888, and Ella in 1894.
Mary Allen Stafford and Franc Roads Elliott became involved again as mature women. Alice Bird Babb was the only Founder involved in P.E.O. for decades, from its beginnings to its North American prominence.
The P.E.O. Founders were not expansionists. They did not take the organization to locations outside Mount Pleasant. From 1869 through 1885, all 17 new chapters were established by those other than the founders. It was the women who followed in the founders’ footsteps who built and nurtured the Sisterhood. These women, whom I call the Builders, worked for the organization and helped it continue on when its future was tenuous. And truth be told, PEO’s future was precarious in the 1870s.
The first PEO convention took place in January 1875. There were only 6 chapters and 3 were in collegiate institutions – Iowa Wesleyan, Mount Pleasant Female Seminary and the Jacksonville Female Seminary in Illinois. The latter two chapters would soon close.
That the organization is here today is a testament to those who came after the seven founders. While I am grateful to those seven for founding P.E.O., I also give my gratitude to those who followed in the founders’ footsteps and devoted themselves to making it what it is today, a Philanthropic Educational Organization, helping women pursue their educational goals. Few know their names and their stories are generally unknown. They, along with the founders, deserve gratitude. Let’s remember them too, today!
