On Friday, I drove to Mount Pleasant, Iowa. On the way, I made a quick stop at Holt House, the home where Pi Beta Phi was founded in 1867. When it was founded it was called I.C. Sorosis. Its motto was Pi Beta Phi, the Greek letters most chapters began using years before the name change was made official at the 1888 convention. One of the founders, Libbie Brook, convinced her parents to let her attend another college. That college was Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, about 55 miles from Monmouth, across the Mississippi River. She likely arrived in Mount Pleasant by train.
There in December of 1868, Libbie Brook established the second chapter of her beloved fraternity. She invited a few of the women whom she thought might be congenial to the ideals of her organization. As happened many times in the history of women’s fraternities/sororities, she invited one or two of a group of friends to join her. Instead of joining with Libbie, those friends gathered their friends and started a society of their own. On January 21, 1869, P.E.O. was born on the Iowa Wesleyan campus.
Sunrise in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, from the comfort of the Comfort Inn.
As I toured the town the next morning, I wished I had a time machine, where I could travel back to the tail end of 1868 and the spring of 1869.
The P.E.O. Memorial Library. Today, it houses an art gallery and Iowa Wesleyan University offices.
Several of the P.E.O. founders are buried in Mount Pleasant. The yellow stars make the graves easy to locate.
Alice Bird Babb, the only P.E.O. Founder to have been continually involved in P.E.O. She wrote the original 35 word oath.
Although Franc Roads Elliot’s remains were scattered, the P.E.O.s placed a marker in the cemetery.
Mary Allen Stafford’s grave marker
Pi Beta Phi founder Nancy Black installed a chapter at the Mount Pleasant Female Seminary, also known as Belden’s Female Seminary. A P.E.O. chapter was also established there. Legend has it that when the rivalry between the two groups became too intense, Mr, Belden confiscated the stars of P.E.O. and the I.C. arrows and locked them away until the two groups promised to get along.
This obelisk for the Belden family was near the graves of some of the P.E.O. founders.
It was indeed a thrill to see the place where P.E.O. came to life on that January day in 1869. While the lives of the founders differed greatly from the lives of women today, the sisterhood they shared and passed along through the nearly 15 decades is as relevant today as it was when P.E.O. began.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
