Early Fraternity Magazines...

[naraht]

It's been interesting to see some of the early (prior to 1920) Fraternity and Sorority magazines on books.google.com.

I've found poems written by brothers published, some that go on for multiple pages, and yet given the number of fraternities founded as literary societies, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Another of the things that most strikes me is how more than 100 years ago, every fraternity magazine editor appears to have read every other fraternity magazine. For example, one fraternity's magazine contained a rebuttal to an newspaper article saying that this fraternity pledged Jews and two other fraternity magazines commented on it.

It also seems like for the early magazines, the editors couldn't imagine anyone outside the fraternity system reading them and there would have almost no way that anyone anti-fraternity or preparing to pledge would have gotten access to them. For example, for one fraternity, brothers in the 21st century consider why their fraternity's letters were chosen to be something private to the fraternity, however the first two years of the fraternity magazine (which were in the 19th century) go into fairly complete depth about it. (as does one of the 19th century issues of Baird's Manual!)

With these fraternities having at the time only a relatively few chapters, it is interesting to see every chapter's activity mentioned in every magazine, not really something that can be done with National Fraternities of 150, 200 or even 300 chapters.

For my own National fraternity, I've learned what the other possible name for the fraternity was and why they didn't pick it, the degree of control of which Boy Scouts of America had over our fraternity in the 1930s.

These magazines truly represent a wonderful opportunity to learn what fraternity and sorority life was like more than 100 years ago.