On January 27, 1870, Bettie Locke [Hamilton] stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw].
In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie 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 Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision.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, Bettie was a formidable student.
During her sophomore year, Bettie received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with the relationship arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When she 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 “ΦΓΔ.” With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi, 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).
Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. 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).
Bettie later said of her time at Indiana Asbury College, “We were all refined, good girls from good families, and we realized somehow that we weren’t going to college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us – if we could just win out” (Manhart, 1962, p. 82).
This post is excerpted from my dissertation, “Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraterniies 1867-1902.”
