Pi Beta Phi was founded on April 28, 1867, at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois by 12 female students. The chapter, along with all its counterparts, was forced to close in the late 1870s because of anti-fraternity sentiments. Luckily, extension has taken place early on, including the second chapter founded at Iowa Wesleyan University on December 21, 1868. Alpha Chapter existed sub rosa through the early 1880s, but a grand council governance structure was approved in 1882.
Its 13th convention took place in conjunction with the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Sessions took place in the evening so that attendees could visit the fair exhibits during the day.
Syracuse University was the site of the 1901 convention. One of the attendees at the 1901 convention was future First Lady Grace Goodhue (Coolidge), who was the delegate from her chapter at the University of Vermont.
Because the 1893 convention was such a memorable one and it took place in conjunction with the exposition, there was a feeling at the 1901 convention that the next one should take place at the same time as the Louisiana Purchase exposition which was planned for St Louis in 1903. Elizabeth Gamble was elected Grand President at the 1901 convention and she jumped into her Pi Phi duties. She was Pi Phi’s representative at the first NPC meeting which took place in 1902 in Chicago.
She contacted Gratia Woodside, a recent alumna of the Missouri Alpha chapter who lived in Salem, Missouri. Gamble asked Woodside to be the Convention Guide for the 1903 convention and help with the convention planning in St. Louis.
Woodside agreed and the adage of if you need something done find a busy person was evident and true. The daughter and granddaughter of judges, Woodside studied the law and was a practicing attorney. Woodside had been admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of Missouri in June 1900. She wrote an interesting article that appeared in an early Arrow about law as a profession for women. Of the woman lawyer Woodside said she:
must be prepared to do the trivial, petty things, when she longs for the complicated-to straighten out marital infelicities when she longs for the intricacies of great problems. She must keep a cool head, be slow to anger, and must never let her sympathy run away with her judgment. She must be a good judge of human nature, and able to handle all sorts of people in such a way as to get the most out of them with the least friction. There is another thing that will not effect the woman lawyer of the future, but which the one of today has to contend with, and that is the notoriety that is forced upon her. She must be prepared to be an object of curiosity,-to try her cases before an audience that is there for the expressed purpose of ‘hearing a woman lawyer,’ and she must either actually be, or must appear unconscious of it all.
Although it was planned for 1903, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition did not take place until 1904. And so it was, too, with the Pi Beta Phi convention. It was three years before the Pi Phis met again.
The convention took place at the Forest Park University Hotel from June 29 through July 1, 1904. Forest Park University existed until the 1920s when the fabulous building was torn down.
The 1904 Pi Beta Phi Convention body in front of the Forest Park University building where the convention took place.
There were two sessions each day, one in the morning at 10 and in the afternoon at 2. Four of the founders – Emma Brownlee Kilgore, Libbie Brook Gaddis, Fannie Whitenack Libbey and Jennie Horne Turnbull. A report in The Arrow described the convention:
With an enthusiasm as fresh and spontaneous as they had for the fraternity in its eastly fays as I.C. Sorosis, they told for the delight of the younger members stories of their college days, and of the beginnings of Pi Beta Phi. Beyond the joy of knowing personally some of our founders, each Pi Phi felt a redoubled interest and pride in her fraternity in learning something of its early history through the reminiscences of the ladies of Monmouth chapter…..
After the girls had returned to the hotel, many information meetings were held in their rooms at which girls from five or six chapters were represented. Here the different customs of each college were discussed, as well as relative merits of the other fraternities. It was at these little ‘gabfests’ as one girl termed them, that the closest friendships were formed. The girls had an opportunity to know one another well, in going to the exposition together. The Pi Phi whistle was heard everywhere, and one was continually meeting girls wearing a knot of wine and blue.
The 1915 convention took place in Berkeley, California, during the Panama Pacific International Exposition. It was the first time the Pi Phis used a special train to convention.
