1879 Baird's
 

The frontispiece and title page of the 1879 edition of Baird's was posted to the "Badge Trends" thread.

Here is the link to the entire book (thank you, Google Books):
http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...&output=reader

My initial observations: resolved chapters are called "dead"; some chapters were so secret that the college wasn't named; Baird listed locals and 'class societies' (for freshmen, sophomores, etc.). "Ladies' Societies" start on p. 143 and are: Alpha Phi, Delta Gamma, Delta Sigma Tau, Delta Chi Alpha, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Kappa Kappa Gamma. (Both Pi Beta Phi and Sigma Kappa were extant then--Pi Phi still I.C. Sorosis--I wonder why Baird didn't include them. Pi Phi was 'chaptered,' to use Baird's term, and he did included locals.)

This scanned edition has marginal comments. It would be interesting to know who the annotator was (and his (her?) motive).

New Geography: Berekely is an Eastern school while Pennsylvania and Ohio are Western!

The interesting thing to me is the amount of Rumor and similar mentioned in the book.

The entries here wouldn't be appropriate as Wikipedia articles, the ones from 1905 and later (when it got 'drier' would be)

Sigma Kappa didn't become national until 1904.

But Baird did include 'locals' in the 1879 volume.

Some, but it really was somewhat scattershot in the first edition. By 1890, it was *much* better.

There is a whole collection of letters written back and forth between them and various Alpha Delta Pi officers about the mistakes made in early editions!

I didn't read the whole thing but it looks like the Macon Magnolias may have been left out just because of the region he started in? It seems to focus a lot on the Great Lakes areas? (Ohio, Indiana, New York, etc.)

Resource for Closed Colleges
 

I would start with http://www2.westminster-mo.edu/wc_us...llegeindex.htm and contact the man who runs that Ray Brown (brownr@westminster-mo.edu). I didn't find anything for Lenth College in what he has, but I think he'd be the ideal resource.

Wouldn't it make more sense, since this info wasn't in any other Baird's edition, that it was incorrect information? (Since he didn't list the other school and there's no record of the GLO or the school anywhere and he was operating in 1879, without modern communication/fact checking, etc.)

>What I think is, is that Lenth College may have been either a "prep" school or the name of some building at some college.<


Each time I've read "Lenth" I've thought, "Oh, it's next door to Bredth." :D