I am in Monmouth, Illinois, for the Holt House Committee meeting. Holt House is the home in which Pi Beta Phi was founded on April 28, 1867. The Committee also visited Kappa Kappa Gamma’s Stewart House.
The Monmouth Duo, Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma, were founded there in 1867 and 1870, respectively. If you visit Monmouth, you will be able to get a glimpse of what life was like when the two organizations were founded.
The home of “Major” Jacob Holt at 402 E. First Avenue, is the founding site of Pi Beta Phi. Today Holt House is open to the public. It is decorated as it might have been in 1867, when Libbie Brook (Gaddis) and Ada Bruen (Grier), two friends from nearby Henderson County, rented the front southwest bedroom from the Holt family. It was there in that room that the organization was founded on April 28, 1867.
Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded on October 13, 1870. The former home of Mary “Minnie” Stewart, the Stewart House, is also open for tours. She was the chapter’s first President and Kappa’s first Grand President. Kappa’s Constitution was written in the home and the charter was signed there as well. The chapter had many of its first meetings in the home.
Stewart House (Photo by Amanda Pilger)
What I find most amazing about both organizations is the they survived the dissolution of the chapters at Monmouth College. Both Kappa Kappa Gamma and Pi Beta Phi had to close their founding chapters in the early 1880s when the College yielded to pressure from the United Presbyterian Church to ban all the fraternities from campus. Both organizations expanded shortly after their formations and the younger chapters were able to keep the organizations viable and growing.
Both Alpha chapters were returned; Pi Phi in the 1920s and Kappa in the 1930s. And both chapters, along with Alpha Xi Delta, are still on campus today.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
