It’s Kappa Delta’s Founders’ Day and in trying to come up with a new post, I discovered that Anna Lytle Tannahill (Brannon), a Pi Beta Phi Grand President and Chairman of the National Panhellenic Conference, had a hand in the establishment of the Kappa Delta chapter at Beloit College. I was going to write about that connection, but that would have made this a post about a Pi Phi, so I thought better of it and searched for another angle.
Kappa Delta was founded on October 23, 1897 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. Its founders are Lenora Ashmore Blackiston, Julia Gardiner Tyler Wilson, Sara Turner White and Mary Sommerville Sparks Hendrick. Kappa Delta, along with Zeta Tau Alpha, Sigma Sigma Sigma and Alpha Sigma Alpha, were founded at the same institution and comprise the “Farmville Four.”
In the summer of 1920, Kappa Delta’s National Council met at Sewanee, Tennessee.
“Effie’s career as a lawyer” piqued my curiosity. Effie Moncure, an initiate of the Louisiana State University chapter, was the National Secretary of Kappa Delta and other mentions of her in the 1920-21 volume of The Angelos of Kappa Delta shed some light on her personality.
Effie Moncure as a high school student
She is described as “drowl, drawling, ‘easygoing,’ but there to get every blink of your eye-lash down in black and white,” and in another account she was described as “shrieking with laughter,” in the midst of a fun activity.
After the 1921 convention at Ithaca, New York, she along with a group of Kappa Deltas headed to New York City for a tour. She died in West Virginia at the home of her sister on April 28, 1934 at the age of 41.
