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 Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision.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 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.
An early Kappa Alpha Theta badge (courtesy of Kappa Alpha Theta)
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.
Virginia Marmaduke joined Kappa Alpha Theta while a student at the University of Iowa. She was born in Carbondale, Illinois, on June 21, 1908. At the age of ten, her family relocated to Chicago. A teacher encouraged her to write and that lead her to Iowa City and the university. She did not graduate as she married Harold E. Grear in April 1930. His parents owned the Herrin Daily Journal, a newspaper in a southern Illinois town. For 13 years, until she and Grear separated, Marmaduke wrote most of the stories in the newspaper, although few had her by-line.
In 1943, she moved back to Chicago, where she was hired by the Chicago Sun. Marmaduke told the editor she wanted to cover news, not the topics of the “women’s pages” – fashion, cooking, and social events. She had moxie and managed to get the scoop before others on important news stories including the beheading of a six-year-old girl. The term “Duchess” came about because the editor said that “Miss Marmaduke” was a mouthful to shout across a crowded newsroom. The moniker stuck.
After she was featured on This Is Your Life television show, she hosted programs on radio and tv.
April 26, 1953, The Pantagram, Bloomington, Illinois
January 31, 1954, The Pantagram, Bloomington, Illinois
One of those shows was called “Coffee with the Duchess.” Marmaduke was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame. After she retired, she moved to southern Illinois and lived in a log cabin that had been in her family for generations. She became a staunch supporter of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the region, and she died in 2001.
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