When Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois opened in September 1856, 26 of the 99 students were women. Ten years later, when the 1866-67 academic year began, the cost of the first term was $12 in tuition and $9 for each additional term. There were no residence halls and students who hailed from outside of Monmouth sought board and lodging from local families. Two students, Ada Bruen and Libbie Brook, friends from Henderson County, found a room to share in the home of Jacob Holt.
It was in that southwest second-floor bedroom that the first national fraternity for women modeled after the Greek-letter fraternities of men was founded on April 28, 1867. There were chapters of Beta Theta Pi, Delta Tau Delta, and Phi Gamma Delta on campus and the women desired that kind of fellowship for themselves. There were literary societies on campus and the women belonged to them, but they wanted something far deeper and with sisterhood at its core.
The name they chose was I. C. Sorosis. Its grip was accompanied by the motto “Pi Beta Phi.” It is believed that Nancy Black selected those Greek letters as she was “the Greek scholar and was always coming up with a new idea.” Several chapters starting using the Greek letters prior to the official name change at the 1888 convention.
In that room in the Holt home, the ten young women who could make it to the first gathering elected Emma Brownlee as president. They made the motion to “always conceal and never reveal” the secrets of their fraternity for women. Within the confines of that small room, the women wrote a constitution and formulated goals; they wanted to “cultivate sincere friendship, establish the real objects of life, and promote the happiness of humanity.”
The twelve founders included two sisters, Emma Brownlee (Kilgore) and Clara Brownlee (Hutchinson), and their friends Ada Bruen (Grier), Nancy Black (Wallace), Inez Smith (Soule), Fannie Whitenack (Libbey), Libbie Brook (Gaddis), Rosa Moore, Jennie Horne (Turnbull), and Margaret Campbell. Two founders, Jennie Nicol and Fannie Thomson, were unable to attend but agreed to go along with whatever the other ten decided.
Libbie Brook enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, with the intention of starting another I. C. chapter. She was successful and in December 1868, Iowa Alpha was chartered.
Fannie Whitenack Libbey later said of those early days, “our first secret was our birthplace. It was quite generally believed that we were a chapter from an Eastern College…a secret we kept for fifteen years. THEN, it was our greatest secret; now, however, that we are ALPHA Chapter is our greatest pride.”
Pi Beta Phi was founded at Holt House in Monmouth, Illinois
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013
