Founder's Legacies?

[AOIIalum]

Originally Posted by RubyPanda

As Elizabeth Heywood Wyman's great great grand niece, I can verify that AOII does have a member tied to the founder.

Hello and welcome to GC! Please come introduce yourself in our AOII forum, we're glad to have you here.

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by RubyPanda

As Elizabeth Heywood Wyman's great great grand niece, I can verify that AOII does have a member tied to the founder.

Well that is pretty cool.

[amIblue?]

I just hope that if the founder's legacy goes elsewhere, she is the one that chooses the other chapter, and not the chapter dropping her!

Can you just imagine the backlash for dropping a founder legacy?

[AnchorAlumna]

We had a Founder's....great-granddaughter, I think...come through rush. She dropped us, but somehow word got around that we had dropped her. That fire took years to stomp out!

[nyapbp]

Sometimes they have to self-identify. Pi Phi has 12 founders, only about half had children. Keeping track of all possible combinations of relations would be a daunting task.

I realized one day that while I had met or corresponded with the great-great grandchildren of one of our founders, they had not known of each other. Sadly, when I realized this one had already passed away. (The founder had a daughter and a son. The daughter married and moved west; the son moved east. They each had children. Those children had children.) Perhaps if the internet was around 75 years ago the families would have connected. One of these women had some of the founder's items that she donated to our archives. She said she likely had them because she was a Pi Phi and her sisters had joined another organization (perhaps there wasn't a Pi Phi chapter where they went to school, I did not ask).

[tld221]

None of our founders had children. As far as I know, one of our founder's nieces became a Soror.

[Titchou]

While I've known her for some time, I had the honor of hearing the granddaughter of Mary Comfort Leonard speak at Founders Day in Tuscaloosa last Sunday. What a treat to hear her personal memories of her grandmother! And to see all the artifacts she brought with her. We also learned that one of her granddaughters will be going to college next year and is looking at Alabama. Since the Fraternity has her badge in the archives(a replacement she got at the 1909 Convention as her original one had been lost)1, their family members are initiated with it. Very cool!

[carnation]

Two great great granddaughters of one of Phi Mu's national founders were in the UGa chapter recently!

[FSUZeta]

Originally Posted by Titchou

While I've known her for some time, I had the honor of hearing the granddaughter of Mary Comfort Leonard speak at Founders Day in Tuscaloosa last Sunday. What a treat to hear her personal memories of her grandmother! And to see all the artifacts she brought with her. We also learned that one of her granddaughters will be going to college next year and is looking at Alabama. Since the Fraternity has her badge in the archives(a replacement she got at the 1909 Convention as her original one had been lost)1, their family members are initiated with it. Very cool!

Fingers crossed that she attends Bama and pledges DG! How great would that be to have a founders great-great(?) granddaughter AND get to see that very special badge at initiation?

[Titchou]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

Fingers crossed that she attends Bama and pledges DG! How great would that be to have a founders great-great(?) granddaughter AND get to see that very special badge at initiation?

I think I would faint dead away!

[badgeguy]

In Kappa Sigma, we had several descendants of the founders become members of the fraternity, and I think there are one or two descendants still around who are members, but back in the 1980s the fraternity had something really cool happen. The spiritual founder of Kappa Sigma was an old Greek Scholar named Manual Chrysoloras who came to Italy in the 1400s to teach greek to the students.......

Anyway, in the 1980s one of the chapters actually initiated a guy who was a direct descendent of Chrysoloras! There was a bunch of articles written in the magazine about it and he attended many conclaves before moving back to Greece. I wish I had been alive to have been able to experience that!

BG

[momof4girls]

I believe I am a distant great granddaughter of one of the founders of Alpha Delta Pi. All the research I've been able to find online points to a direct lineage, but I really need to make a trip to Georgia to search archives and verify 100%. While I am not an ADPi, my mother is. Mom didn't become related until after she married my dad.

[dvs-dz]

I know Julia Bishop Coleman's daughter and granddaughter are Delta Zetas. Beyond that, I don't know.

[MysticCat]

We have one Founder -- Ossian Everett Mills, "Father of Sinfonia." The original members of our Alpha chapter are referred to as charter members of the Fraternity.

Father Mills' great-great-grandson, Eric Mills, was initiated in 2008 by our Gamma Theta chapter (University of North Texas). I may be dreaming this -- I'm not finding any reference to it on the web -- but I seem to recall reading that he was not aware that his great-great-grandfather was the founder of Sinfonia when he pledged.

In addition, Father Mills' grandson, Arthur Mills, was initiated as a national honorary member (Alpha Alpha chapter) in connection with Founder's Day observances in Boston in October 2004. The honorary initiation was in recognition of the support and assistance he gave Fraternity leaders who were doing historical research in preparation for our 1998 Centennial. Mills, who was born about six years after Father Mills' death, was around 77 at the time of his initiation.