Delta Delta Delta was founded at Boston University on November 28, 1888, which fell on the day before Thanksgiving that year. Founders’ Day is celebrated on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
In the fall of 1888, four senior women who had not joined any of the three women’s fraternities then at Boston University discussed their situation. Eleanor Dorcas Pond (Mann, M.D.) talked to Sarah Ida Shaw (Martin) and they decided to start a society of their own. Pond suggested that they use a triple Greek letter and Shaw chose the Greek letter Delta. Shaw also developed the mottoes and passwords.
All was finished by Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, 1888. However, the two met again on Wednesday afternoon, before leaving for the holiday. They met in the Philological Library at the top of the college building. Shaw and Pond embraced and said “Tri Delta is founded.”
Shaw and Pond were intent on getting the other two unaffiliated seniors to join their organization. Florence Stewart quickly agreed, but Isabel Breed took a little more convincing due to her highly religious nature. When she was given the job of chaplain, she relented and joined her friends. The four are considered founders. Soon they were joined by three juniors, five sophomores, and six freshmen. These women were initiated at the Joy Street home of Emily F. Allen on January 15, 1889.
On June 1, 1895, the Upsilon Chapter was installed at Northwestern University. Among its early members was Marian McSherry Doren (Tomlinson). She was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1877. An Oberlin College catalog has her enrolled there during the 1895-96 academic year. On the Tri Delta page on the 1898 Northwestern Syllabus yearbook, she is identified as a sophomore.
She married George Horace Tomlinson, an alumnus of the Delta Upsilon chapter at Northwestern in 1900. It appears they spent their married life in the Chicago suburbs. A 1950 Rotarian magazine congratulated the couple on 50 years of marriage. She was a part of her local suffrage movement. She is identified in this article which appeared in the Willamette, Illinois Lake Shore News, on May 23, 1918.
The February 1921 Trident included a note from Tomlinson about the 1920 Armistice Day celebration in Paris. She and her two children were touring Europe. Tomlinson wrote:
I feel nearer the heart of the French people and nearer to their past after seeing the pageant of armistice day.
Thursday and Friday I could hardly wait to tell you of the wonderful sights of armistice day; today, I must recall the thrillers. Probably the home papers have had repeated references to the double celebration which here has been heralded for weeks and for which grand preparations have been making in every town of France, and in Paris of course the very grandest. For here on the steps of the Pantheon fifty years ago Gambetta declared the third republic and back to the Pantheon does his heart for, this nation giving honor. At the same time do they honor all soldiers who died nameless, yet gave their all to the cause of France and of humanity, by depositing the remains of the poilu inconnu in the Arc de Triomphe, with all honors also.
As the endless ranks of the blue passed but it was east to think back to the days when they must have been the usual sight. The soldiers were ahorse and afoot; they wore helmets, caps, tams, tricorns and feathers, medals, stripes, bars and insignia which told a story that I could not read except enough to know that they represented service and honor. They carried bright banners and war scarred flags, some dating back to 1870, their sabers and bayonets did not glisten as those might which had never seen service.
And always there was the martial music of the hands of the buglers who delighted in giving their horns somersaults in the air without interfering or losing any notes. I can not tell where the in the procession of infantry, cuirassiers, Alpine blue devils, artillery wagons, marines, colonials, came the gold box holding the heart of Gambetta at the peak of a drag, canopied in gilt brocade, and the coffin borne by a tonneau draped with the tricolor – but they came and the crowd was very quiet.
Then followed the men of today great in France. On the front line Millerand in simple black but of bearing marvelously distinguished. Marshal Foch, Petain, Joffre, and others whom I did not recognize. They walked, as did venerable senators and deputies, in top hats. Was this a tribute to democracy or to the honored dead? Just as at all funerals the mourners walk. The crowds were very quiet, occasional catching the tune that the band was playing, and singing, occasionally recognizing a hero, last giving to the veterans with their scarred flaps the most spontaneous recognition.
According to her obituary, Marian Doren Tomlinson was a founder of the Evanston School of Foreign Affairs. Between the World Wars, the organization sponsored speakers and discussions in conjunction with Northwestern University and other community organizations. Its purpose was to clarify international issues.
In the 1940s, Tomlinson served on the Evanston Public Library Board. The American Library Association awarded her a Citation of Merit in 1943. She died in 1966.
