By 1870, eight state universities accepted women; these institutions were the Universities of Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, and California (Newcomer, 1959). Women’s fraternities provided the female students with a support system in an educational environment that was sometimes hostile to them, especially during the early years of coeducation.
In 1873, the Kansas Alpha chapter of Pi Beta Phi came into existence through the labors of Sara Richardson, a member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. Richardson had spent the summer of 1872 at home in Lawrence, Kansas. She had three sisters who were enrolled at Kansas University. When, in the spring of 1873, Richardson found that some Kansas men were forming a chapter of Beta Theta Pi, she informed her Kansas sisters and friends. The Kansas Alpha chapter of Pi Beta Phi was chartered on April 1, 1873 with seven members, including May, Flora, and Alma Richardson (Flora would be the University’s first valedictorian).
The first meetings were held in the University’s music room on Thursday afternoons with the janitor supplying the key to unlock the doors (Richardson, 1885). The chapter’s first party at Kansas University, one to honor Sara Richardson, was dubbed by the Chancellor, John Fraser, as a “Cookie Shine,” a tradition that was quickly adopted to other chapters and to this day continues to be a special part of membership in Pi Beta Phi.
Charter member Gertrude Boughton Blackwelder[1] (1914) described the women who formed the chapter, “Forty years ago a young woman pursuing a college course found herself the target for many criticisms and queries. She was risking her health for the sake of a little learning, – she was crowding her mind with a mass of information much of it utterly useless, – her interests were being called away from the traditional sphere of women – to marry and bear children, – and what was to be the outcome? It was difficult, I remember, for us to find replies to these questions. We had to confess our inability to see clearly a definite use for the higher mathematics, for a knowledge of science, that elusive and ever-changing study, – for the dates and facts of history we were so industriously acquiring, – the smattering of art, languages, etc. etc. But we had entered a field hitherto denied to women, and we must prove our ability to cope with men in intellectual work. We studied because we were eager to know things, and the utilitarian side of the matter troubled us little. President Hadley of Yale has illuminated the subject by saying “that you can teach a student to study things that he is not going to use by methods that he is going to use.” So it seems to-day that our minds were developed and trained by the work we did and by the efforts to master the subjects which had been the traditional province of men.” (pp. 312-313)
The Kappa chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta at the University of Kansas came into beginning in a most round about manner. A letter of inquiry was sent to the Eta chapter in Ann Arbor rather than Alpha chapter at DePauw University. Eta member Lee Bird visited Lawrence, Kansas, to install the chapter and on March 18, 1881, the Kappa chapter was installed. Four years later the chapter took on the task of publishing the first edition of the Kappa Alpha Theta Journal[2] (Dodge, 1930).
In the early 1880s a group of women discussed forming a third women’s fraternity on the University of Kansas campus. A fraternity man on campus had a fraternity brother whose wife was a Kappa Kappa Gamma alumna. Through this contact, on December 17, 1883, the Omega chapter was installed with eight charter members (Walker, 1903).
Kappa Chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, University of Kansas, late 1800s
Notable University of Kansas alumnae initiated into National Panhellenic Conference organizations prior to 1902.
Alden, Jenette Hubbard Bolles, D. O., University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1885, physician. One of the first woman to study osteopathy, she graduated from the American School of Osteopathy at Kirksville, Missouri, in 1894. She became a member of the first class ever organized to teach osteopathy at the American School of Osteopathy and was a professor at the school from 1893-1895. She headed the departments of anatomy, gynecology and obstetrics at the Colorado College of Osteopathy from 1897 until 1904. Beginning in 1904, Alden was in private practice with her husband in Denver, Colorado (Pomeroy, 1909).
Berry, Josephine Thorndike, University of Kansas, Pi Beta Phi, 1893, hotel executive. After spending many years teaching home economics at the collegiate level, Berry became the builder and operator of Thorndike Hall, an apartment hotel for women in Kansas City, Missouri (Howes, 1939).
Clarke, Edith M., University of Kansas Kappa Alpha Theta, 1895, Phi Beta Kappa, librarian at the University of Kansas (Bell, 1902).
Crotty-Davenport, Gertrude, University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1889, scientist. She assisted her husband who was head of the biological station at the Carnegie Institute at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. She co-authored a book entitled Introduction to zoology (Bartol-Theiss, 1919).
Goss, Alice Morgan, M.D., University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1875, physician. She started medical studies at San Francisco Homeopathic School and was later graduated from the Chicago Hahnemann College. Specializing in the diseases of women and children, she was in private practice in San Francisco from 1890 until 1930. (Pomeroy, 1909; “In memoriam,” 1935).
Haskell, Carrie Goss, M.D., University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1873. She attended St. Louis Medical College in 1875 and the Hahnemann Homeopathic College of Chicago, from which she received a medical degree in 1878. She was in private practice in several California cities (Pomeroy, 1909).
Lockwood, Laura E., Ph.D., University of Kansas Kappa Kappa Gamma, professor. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, wrote a lexicon on Milton’s use of words and taught at Wellesley College (“Kappas known to fame,” 1915, October).
Merrill, Katherine, University of Kansas Kappa Alpha Theta, 1889, Assistant Professor in English at the University of Illinois (Bell, 1902).
Miles-Woodward, Josephine, University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1882, journalist. She was a war correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette during the Spanish-American War and was the first woman sent to the island in that capacity. She obtained an interview with General Weyler (Bartol-Theiss, 1919
Rohe, Alice, University of Kansas Pi Beta Phi, 1896, journalist. She was the feature writer at the New York Evening World for five years (Bartol-Theiss, 1919).
Schaum, Madge, D. D. S., University of Kansas Kappa Alpha Theta, 1895, dentist. She studied dentistry in Chicago and was a practicing dentist (Bell, 1902).
Simpson, Mamie, University of Kansas Kappa Alpha Theta, artist. In 1888, she had a painting accepted by the Paris Salon. After returning from European study, she began teaching oil painting at the University of Kansas (“Personals,” 1888) .
Walker, Mary L. Simpson, University of Kansas Kappa Alpha Theta, 1891, Professor of Art at Kansas State University (Bell, 1902).
[1] In 1893, she read a paper before the Congress of Women’s Fraternities at the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago (Spring, 1936).
[2] The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma and The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi also had their beginnings at the University of Kansas. There is a blog post on is site about it.
From Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902 by Frances DeSimone Becque, 2002. (c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistorycom.
