Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897 at the home of Helen St. Clair (Mullan). She and three of her Barnard College friends, Stella George Stern (Perry), Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Elizabeth Heywood Wyman had pledged themselves to the organization on December 23, 1896. That first pledging ceremony took place in a small rarely used upstairs room in the old Columbia College Library.
Celebrating a Founders’ Day on the second day of the new year proved to be a challenge for the organization, so Alpha Omicron Pi now celebrates Founders’ Day on December 8, Stella’s birthday.
Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter was halfway cross the country and to the south, 1,300 miles away from Manhattan. Stella contacted Evelyn Reed, a classmate from New Orleans. Evelyn’s sister, Katherine, was a student at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.
Newcomb College as it was known, was founded in 1886 by Josephine Louise Newcomb in memory of her daughter Harriott Sophie. In 1870, 15 year-old Sophie died of diphtheria. Her widowed mother was despondent and sought to create a memorial to her beloved Sophie. Newcomb College, the women’s coordinate of Tulane University.
On September 8, 1898, Katherine Reed became the first pledge of the Pi Chapter at Newcomb College. Not only was it Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter, but it was also the second women’s fraternity at Newcomb. Pi Beta Phi’s Louisiana Alpha chapter was established in 1891. “The little Greek community at Newcomb was very delightfully entertained at a charmingly original birthday party, given by the Alpha Omicron Pi girls, to celebrate the first anniversary of the founding of their chapter,” reported the Pi Phi chapter in the January 1900 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi.
The third chapter, Nu, was established in New York University in 1900.
Stella George Stern (Perry)
