Kappa Alpha Theta was founded on January 27, 1870. In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie McReynolds Locke [Hamilton] was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision. She later said of her time as a student, “We were all refined, good girls from good families, and we realized somehow that we weren’t going to college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us – if we could just win out.”
The daughter of Dr. John Wesley Locke, a mathematics professor, she was a formidable student. During her sophomore year, Locke received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with a dating arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When Locke declined the badge because it did not come with full membership rights and responsibilities, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter substituted a silver cake basket, inscribed with the Greek letters “Phi Gamma Delta.” With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi alumnus, and her brother William, a Phi Gamma Delta, Locke began plans to start her own fraternity. She and Alice Allen, another female in the first coeducational Asbury class, studied Greek, parliamentary law and heraldry with an eye towards founding a fraternity for women.
On January 27, 1870, Locke stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Olive Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw]. Five weeks later, Mary Stevenson, a freshman, joined the group. Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870.
The 1924 Grand Convention
West Baden Springs Hotel
Theta’s 1924 Grand Convention took place at the West Baden Springs Hotel in West Baden, Indiana. It was billed as a homecoming convention and took place from June 27-July 1. Most of the attendees made their way there via rail. Extensive instructions for securing tickets were published in the organization’s magazine. Some of the attendees rode the special train that spent several hours in Greencastle, site of the founding. Then the train went onto Bloomington where the second chapter was established. Those opting for this side trip would spend the night on the train and arrive at West Baden in the morning.
Jeannette Barnes (Monnet), an initiate of the University of Oklahoma chapter attended the convention. When Barnes left Union Station in St. Louis, “there were girls everywhere wearing Kappa Alpha Theta badges. All of them had a happy, anxious and expectant expression.”
Those who considered driving to southern Indiana were given names of Thetas to contact for advice and direction.
Those wishing to attend were instructed to make their own reservations with the hotel. Inside refers to rooms looking out over the atrium. Outside rooms had views of the grounds.
Room rates and instructions for securing a convention room.
Barnes described the West Baden Springs Hotel as a “magnificent edifice placed in a setting of gardens, brilliant with flowers of varied hues.” Once in the hotel, Barnes spied a “huge circular space littered with bathtubs, wash bowls, sawdust, boxes and men everywhere hammering. Such a mess!” The line to get a room was two hours. Why? Plumbers! And a plumbers convention. And plumbers who had such a good time the night before. Some were a little too “indisposed to leave their rooms the next morning.”
The atrium at the West Baden Springs Hotel in 2019.
The dining room that first night was filled with about 500 women. They were “laughing and chattering. Most of them were young but scattered among the bobbed, marcelled heads of the younger generation were the snow white heads of women who before us worked and strove to make Kappa Alpha Theta what is today.”
According to Barnes, the convention highlight was founder Betty Locke Hamilton. She was a “small unassuming woman to whom five hundred women extended a most since welcome by applauding and asking for a speech until she assented.” Barnes added, “Speaking merely as an onlooker I would say that she is friendly, determined, gracious, unpretentious and full of fun. I know this last quality because of the twinkle in her eye and then during the banquet procession, after we had walked a long time, I distinctly her say ‘If they don’t give me some food pretty soon I’ll never get there.'”
Bettie Locke Hamilton late in her life. Photo courtesy of Kappa Alpha Theta.
The West Baden Springs Hotel would close during the early days of the Great Depression. It would fall into ruin and be rebuilt in the early 2000s. Today it a wondrous place. All rooms have bathing facilities and running water and room prices have increased substantially.
The world has changed greatly in the nearly 100 years since Barnes wrote her report for the Theta magazine. Yet, her summation of a convention is as true today as it was then. The final banquet was a “beautiful affair with its bright decorations and pretty faces and frocks, yet over all is an air of sadness. The sadness of farewell. You listen to the toasts, the songs, glance around and wonder if you will ever see these faces again. And as you pass out singing the Recessional there is a lump in your throat and a heaviness of heart. Yet with the bitter there is the sweet and the thought comes of another convention in two years and the resolution that you’ll be there if possible. Thus is convention.”
