GreekChat.com Forums - Emily Butterfield

I hope this copys over, and if it doesnt, I will give a link to the Lambda Chi Alpha on line Cross and Cresent.

by Mike Raymond • February 2006 • No Comments

Emily H. Butterfield was born in Algonac, Michigan, along the Canadian border near Detroit, in 1884.

Sweetheart of Lambda Chi
While not as famous as its Sigma Chi counterpart, the song A Sweetheart of Lambda Chi has been a cherished part of our fraternity’s history.

Used as the traditional pinning song, Jack Mason (Pennsylvania 1913) wrote its original lyrics in the 1920s. The lyrics have since been updated by David D. Leathers (California State-Fresno 1982) and Joe R. Hammer (Ball State 1975) and the music by Wilbur Perry (Michigan 1946).

The song can still be heard at special fraternal events. Or if you like, on Valentine’s Day, ask your loved one to pull up a chair and join you in listening to this 1996 recording from the 46th General Assembly.

Listen Now

She began her training as an artist early in her life under the direction of her father. In 1903 she entered the architecture program at Syracuse University. In May 1904, she became one of the 11 founders of Alpha Gamma Delta Fraternity.

After graduation, Butterfield soon became Michigan’s first female architect and organized the Detroit Business Women’s Club, the first professional women’s club in America.

In 1917 she joined with her father to form the architectural firm of Butterfield and Butterfield. They gained a renowned reputation as innovative church designers.

Butterfield was a major contributor to the early history of Alpha Gamma Delta. In addition to being one of its founders, she served for seven years as the editor of the AGD Quarterly. She also designed the houses for their Syracuse and Michigan State chapters. In the spring of 1906, she completed the design of the Alpha Gamma Delta coat of arms.

In Print
Seventy-five years ago, the Collegiate Press issued a small, tan colored, soft back book by Butterfield entitled College Fraternity Heraldry. This rare book contains a wealth of information about the significance of college fraternity and sorority heraldry.

The book also serves as a guide to the design of coats of arms in accordance with the traditional rules of the craft. It appears that Butterfield studied the art of heraldry with her father as a young girl. He inspired her to continue her interest in this field of study throughout her life.

Butterfield worked as a freelance artist and designer for Burr, Patterson, and Auld Company and George Banta Publishing Company for many years. George Banta, a Phi Delta Theta, encouraged her to write her book based on articles she had written for him in the past.

This unique book is illustrated with many black and white drawings of sorority and fraternity coats of arms. In each case she describes the coat of arms in proper heraldic terms.

Her introductory chapter is a short course in American style heraldry that still works as a fine lesson in authentic design. The book’s glossary is a tremendous aid in understanding the formal and complex terminology used in interpreting the real meaning of the symbolic language of a coat of arms.

Designing Heraldry
Both Burr, Paterson, and Auld Company and George Banta Publishing Company maintained departments that provided design services for individuals, existing fraternities and sororities, and groups that wanted to start new fraternal organizations.

Banta provided a one-stop, full service operation in support of aspiring fraternity and sorority founders. The company’s staff offered everything from regalia and equipment to ritual and coat of arms design — Butterfield’s specialty.

Butterfield was a prolific designer who is credited with the design of numerous college sorority and fraternity coats of arms.

She is acknowledged as the coats of arms designer for Alpha Gamma Delta, Lambda Omega, Theta Phi Alpha, and Phi Beta sororities and co-designer of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority coat of arms.

Butterfield also designed the coats of arms for Sigma Delta Rho, Sigma Tau Gamma, Theta Upsilon Omega, Tau Kappa Epsilon, and Theta Kappa Nu fraternities.

Butterfield designed the Theta Kappa Nu coat of arms in July 1925 thus making this impressive expression of heraldic design more than 80 years old. In College Fraternity Heraldry she describes the Theta Kappa Nu coat of arms in these words:

Chevrony of eleven, an inescutcheon gules.

Crest: A lion rampant gules holding palewise a white rose slipped, proper.

Motto: Vir Quisque Vir Est.

Designed in July, 1925, by Emily H. Butterfield.

Shaping Lambda Chi Alpha
Though virtually unknown today, Butterfield was a well respected, and much in demand, designer of fraternity and sorority heraldry for more than 30 years.

Her legacy as the designer of Theta Kappa Nu’s coat of arms lives on as a significant part of our historic merger with Theta Kappa Nu Fraternity.

Her legacy to Lambda Chi Alpha is found in the symbolism taken from the Theta Kappa Nu coat of arms and incorporated into our present Lambda Chi Alpha coat of arms.

It is most clearly expressed, as she described it, in the use of the “Crest. A lion rampant gules holding palewise a white rose slipped, proper.” The open motto of Theta Kappa Nu, slightly modified, “Vir Quisque Vir Est,” is also a part of our current coat of arms.

Butterfield’s memory is kept alive by her fraternity. In the 2004 Alpha Gamma Delta Centennial Keynote Address its members were reminded of her significant contributions to its history with these words:

In the United States in 1900, three-quarters of the states forbade married women to own property in their name. In 1909, the members of Alpha Gamma Delta overlooked the statistic and planned ahead by starting a house fund in hopes of purchasing their own home. In 1928, they challenged the societal constraints once again by not only purchasing but building the first house — and we all know the name of the architect — Emily Helen Butterfield.

Butterfield was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame for her work in the field of architecture in 1990 long after her death in 1958.

All members of Lambda Chi Alpha owe a debt of gratitude to Emily H. Butterfield for her creative work that led to the design of the official Theta Kappa Nu coat of arms in 1925.

Photo Credits in Order of Apperance
© Courtesy Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, All Rights Reserved.
© Courtesy College Fraternity Heraldry, All Rights Reserved.
© Courtesy Selva Morales, All Rights Reserved.
Issue: February 2006 | Author: Mike Raymond | Filed in: History, 2006 February

If pictures do not come out, got to www.lambdachi.org

Go to link for Cross and Cresent.

Amazing how intertwined We as Greek Organizations really are.

Interfraternally Yours,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------