The Philomathean Society was founded on January 4, 1852, at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Mary Ann DuPont (Lines) likely came up with the idea. She joined with Mary Elizabeth Myrick (Daniel) and Martha Bibb Hardaway (Redding) and they are the founders of Phi Mu. Founders’ Day is celebrated on March 4, the day the new society was announced. In 1904, the Philomathean Society became Phi Mu and established its second chapter at Hollins College in Virginia.
The Sigma chapter at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, was founded in 1912. Several years later, Ildra Jessup became a member of the chapter. As a collegian during World War I, she honored the men from Knox who fought by drawing these illustrations for the Gale yearbook. She was active in many college activities and was a member of Mortar Board.
For several years she was a society editor and proofreader at the Galesburg Evening Mail newspaper. She married Robert Hamilton Larson, a Knox Phi Delta Theta, on June 20, 1922 in Galesburg, Illinois. The couple had two sons.
For the first years of their marriage while they lived in Galesburg, she was an active member of the Galesburg Alumnae Association and helped the Phi Mu chapter with recruitment efforts. In the fall of 1927, the alumnae hosted a dinner party for the chapter and the potential new members. Larson and the two other members of the committee “did the buying, most of the cooking and serving of a three course dinner.” The event was a doll party, “doll lamps being given as favors to the rushees and dolls of all kinds being used as house decorations. The dessert of the dinner was worked out with candy, jello, whipped cream and tiny cakes to represent dolls.” Larson also was a cohostess of a May 1927 meeting “All members are cooperating to raise money to pay for our share in the new Panhellenic House Association of New York and later on the amount due for the insurance endowment plan.”
Larson served Phi Mu as the editor of the Pi Mu Star, a convention newspaper. She also served as Assistant Editor of The Aglaia. In 1931, she was third place winner in a Sears, Roebuck and Company interior design contest. She won a complete dining room set for her design efforts.
Larson spent 16 years as Director of Volunteers at Grant Hospital in Chicago. After her husband’s retirement in 1970, they moved to North Carolina. Her residency there was short. She moved to Wilmington, Delaware in 1974, after her husband’s death to be closer to family. In 1977, she was added to Knox College’s Scroll of Honor. Larson spent her retirement years writing letters to the editor. She died in 1991 at the age of 91.
