“What objection can Miss Talbott (sic) make to a national fraternity in the face of this?” was written on a page that had an undated article entitled “Hazing as Girls Practice it.” It was in with some late 1890s correspondence about a women’s fraternity that was hoping to form a chapter at the University of Chicago.
The Chicago Tribune article read:
Much curiosity and amusement was caused among University of Chicago students Thursday by the strange actions and curious appearance of Miss Darida (sic) Harper, daughter of President Harper, and her many changes of costume during her promenade on the campus are explained by the fact that she was being initiated into the Esoteric club, a women’s secret society at the university.
The young women took advantage of the high position of the president’s daughter to inflict upon her many new and fiendish barbarities.
In the morning she was compelled to go to her classes a huge market basket, wearing an immense straw hat of the umbrella pattern, gorgeously bedecked with long streamers of green and yellow ribbon. A little later she was seen promenading up and down the campus in the hot sunshine arrayed in fur cap, boa, muff, mittens and ear muffs. Another change followed, and she came out in a calico dress of bright and varied hue. At one time she pushed a little red wheelbarrow containing a diminutive yellow dog and a choice collection of disabled dolls.
Next she tripped across the grassy sward carrying a green lantern in one hand a bird cage in the other, and once she made a flying trip ringing a cow bell and pulling after her a toy wagon filled with bricks.
Dean Marian Talbott (sic) finally interfered and put a stop to the fun. Today Miss Harper is a finished Esoteric and is receiving the congratulations of her friends.”
That same small article was published by the Utica (NY) Morning Herald on April 27, 1896. The Chatham (NY) Courier published a condensed version of the article in its April 29, 1896 issue describing the “grotesque requirements” of the Esoteric. All the articles misspelled the name of Helen Davida Harper [Eaton], the only daughter of William Rainey Harper.
William Rainey Harper graduated from Muskingum College at age 14. He then did postgraduate studies at Yale University. In 1891, when Harper was 35, John D. Rockefeller picked him to help him create the University of Chicago. Rockefeller also selected him to be its first president. Harper also assisted with the creation of Bradley University and served as its first president.
The University of Chicago website describes the Esoteric as a:
student organization that ran from the early 1900s through 1962. It was created for the purpose of advancing social life on campus. Enhancing campus social life was especially important for women in the early years of the University because sororities were not permitted. As a result, women were often active in creating what became known as social clubs, such as the women-only Esoteric.
From letters available in the University of Chicago archives, it appears that Dean of Women Marion Talbot did not wish the women’s fraternities/sororities to be a part of campus life. The woman who wrote the note on the above newspaper article was aware of an 1896 effort to install a chapter of Pi Beta Phi on campus. Her note was sent to an officer of that organization. A letter from Katharine L. Sharpe, Grand President of Kappa Kappa Gamma, is also in the University of Chicago archives.
Talbot was a graduate of Boston University and she also had a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Talbot had been a Wellesley College instructor until she resigned to become a part of the University of Chicago when it opened in 1892. Ten years earlier, in 1882, she was a co-founder of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae; in 1921, it joined with the Southern Association of College Women and became the American Association of University Women.
The men’s fraternity system at the University of Chicago pre-dates Rockerfeller’s creation of the University. The Old University of Chicago was founded in 1857 and it failed in 1886. The University of Chicago’s Phi Delta Theta chapter was established at the “First University in 1865 near 35th street (sometimes called ‘The Old University’), and floundered with it.” The Phi Delt chapter was revived in 1897. Chapters of men’s fraternities have existed on the campus throughout the university’s history.
It took nearly a century after the first attempt was made to establish a National Panhellenic Conference organization on campus. Alpha Omicron Pi chartered a chapter in 1985 and it was followed by a Kappa Alpha Theta chapter the next year. Delta Sigma Theta, a National PanHellenic Conference sorority, established a Chicago chapter in 1947. On April 20, 2013, Pi Beta Phi installed its Illinois Kappa Chapter, culminating an effort that had started more than a century ago.
My thanks to Emily Jones for her help with the archives research and to Christopher Walters for the picture of the Esoteric badge.
© Fran Becque www.fraternityhistory.com All rights reserved.
