Quote:
Originally posted by tekmousechica
The connection between Alpha Pi, Gamma Phi Beta, and Alpha Gamma Delta is that they were all founded at Syracuse University in Syracuse New York. Alpha Pi in 1872, Gamma Phi Beta in 1874, and Alpha Gamma Delta in 1904. One fun fact is that our badges have similar designs (all are monograms of our letters).
|
http://web.archive.org/web/199904211...rg/sum981.html
"The Syracuse Triad"
Edith Huey Shelton, a former Alpha Phi Executive Board member, used to say that the human mind has a bent to perceive things in threes, that there is something compelling about odd-numbered groupings.
Whether it reflects our psyches or not, we Greeks dote on "Triads," leagues of three fraternities which were founded at the same place. The preeminent one is the Union Triad—Kappa Alpha Society (1825), Sigma Phi Society (1827) and Delta Phi (1827)—all founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
These three also happen to be the granddaddies of all our modern fraternities. There had been literary societies earlier and abortive fraternities, which left no thumbprints on us. Phi Beta Kappa had been founded in 1776 as a social fraternity but had developed into to a scholastic honorary. The Union Triad fraternities are the first that we'd recognize if we met them in a dark chapter room. Three more fraternities were founded at Union after these but are not members of the original Triad.
The second well-touted Triad is the Miami Triad: Beta Theta Pi (1839), Phi Delta Theta (1848) and Sigma Chi (1855) all founded at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
There is also a well-known "Duo." Pi Beta Phi (1867) and Kappa Kappa Gamma (1870) were founded at the same college, in Monmouth, Illinois, "The Monmouth Duo."
But of all these groupings, none has greater claim to the name than our own Syracuse Triad. Not only were Alpha Phi (1872), Gamma Phi Beta (1874) and Alpha Gamma Delta (1904) all founded at Syracuse University, but there are actual linkages between the foundings. We might all be one under the badge.
Alpha Phi and Gamma Phi Beta were the first half-sisters. A story says it was sex discrimination that led up to the founding of Alpha Phi. Methodist Bishop Jesse T. Peck had just shoved through the admission of women to Syracuse University against the opposition of many dour trustees and faculty members. And then came the women. There were 19 of them the fall of 1872.
When you've succeeded in barging in somewhere where you aren't really welcome, however, sometimes they make you pay for it later. This is what happened to the women who entered Syracuse University. They were the pariahs of the campus.
Alpha Phi Founder Martha Foote Crow in a letter she wrote in 1897 on the occasion of Alpha Phi's 25th anniversary recalls that "women felt an atmosphere of opposition and criticism. We had no chance to blossom forth in a free atmosphere of encouragement and approval—the atmosphere that is absolutely necessary to the right development of any human personality. We were always looked at askance by many—I am not saying all—and we worked always under the greatest difficulties. There were no women in the faculty. No professors' wives aided us by advice, no mature womanly minds gave us any assistance. There were no halls of residence."
"Alpha Phi," she sums up, "was founded partly from imitation. University men had societies and found them good. We did not know any better than to imitate them. That was one reason, but there was also this other, that we needed a social center, a place of conference, a tie which should unite us in the midst of a more or less hostile atmosphere, a circle of friends who could sympathize with each other in the perplexities of our situation."
So they drew together on September 18, 1872, a Wednesday. The first meeting was held upstairs at the home of Mr. C.W. Howe at 41 Irving Street. Three of the college women, Kittie Hogoboom, Helen Dodge and Clara Sittser, were boarders there. Kittie and Helen had the big front room where the meeting was held over a plate of cakes. Clara's room in the back held the cloaks.
Fourteen beleaguered women attended that organizational meeting. Officers were elected, and committees were appointed to select a name and motto and draft a constitution. At the close of that first chapter meeting, they stood together in a circle, hands clasped and pledged loyalty while they were absent, one from the other.
Martha Foote Crow tells us what happened subsequently: "Of these first 14, there were three who fell out absolutely from our circle. One was Helen Dodge." Sister Martha suspects that Helen Dodge may have felt incompatible in the Alpha Phi circle, "although the excuse she made was that she had conscientious scruples against taking an oath."
So Helen Dodge, who might have made it "The Original Twelve," wafts from Alpha Phi history. Two years pass. It is 1874, and Syracuse University has a new chancellor, Dr. Erastus O. Haven, a strong advocate of education for women. He was also a fraternity man, a member of Phi Nu Theta, an historic local at Wesleyan College. With Dr. Haven came his family and daughter Frances, a junior in college. Immediately, artistic Frances was invited to join Alpha Phi, which by then numbered 21 members. But in her own words Frances says, "Although they were the friendliest people I have ever met, after due deliberation, I thanked them for the honor and declined."
Soon Frances Haven discovered that there were other unaffiliated women. They drifted together, and finding each other congenial, the question was broached, "Why shall we not found a society of our own?"
One of the congenial spirits was the turnabout Helen Dodge, in whose room the first Alpha Phi meeting was held and who had been appointed to the constitution committee. These two students and two others, aided and abetted by Chancellor Haven, formed Gamma Phi Beta Sorority at Syracuse on November 11, 1874. Helen Dodge wrote the constitution. Alpha Phi had a rival at Syracuse University and a former Alpha Phi had helped to perpetrate it.
For Alpha Phi's link with Alpha Gamma Delta, we need to start over again in 1872. Alpha Phi was hatched, and for the first few months the fledgling chapter met from house to house. Then Sister Florence Chidester's father, who was a physician, offered to place his office on Salina Street at their disposal on Friday evenings.
"Many a delightful and profitable evening did we spend there," recalled Kate Hogoboom, "but alas, all good times come to an end. The good times in that room ceased one eventful evening when, during solemnities of the opening services, a gentle disturbance was felt among one sister's draperies, and she arose to her feet with more haste than dignity, only to discover to her terror-stricken vision, a cunning mouse!
"This disastrous encounter sounded the death knell of Dr. Chidester's office as a chapter hall, and we began bestirring ourselves to find a room which we might keep sacred from the molestations of mouse or man, our great enemies."
This search for a safe and "sacred" hall brought up the question of the legal status of the group. Enter Dr. Wellesley P. Coddington, professor of Greek at Syracuse, and ingenious mentor of Alpha chapter. Like Chancellor Haven, Dr. Coddington was a member of Phi Nu Theta Fraternity. He advised the women to incorporate under the New York law, which permitted the formation of benevolent, literary, scientific and missionary societies. Since this precluded the incorporation of a Greek-letter society, the chapter applied under the name of the Michaelanean Society, in honor of their first president Rena Micheals, "Professor Coddy" signed as director of the society for the first year.
He drafted Alpha Phi's public motto, which was in German, and helped write the constitution and bylaws. Professor Coddy exuded any male confidence that the women might have lacked. He urged them to rent and eventually to build a chapter house. On June 22, 1886, he laid the cornerstone of Alpha chapter house, the first sorority house in America.
So much assistance was Professor Coddy that it was once proposed that his name be cheered at every Alpha Phi meeting for five years. Later this action was changed to a more substantial expression of appreciation, and a chair was purchased for his study at the university.
Dorothy Robertson remembered her grandfather, Professor Coddy, as an awe-inspiring, stiff but gentle man. Only once did she ever see him angry. Students found him a wonderful teacher and lecturer. He was also a minister and preached in Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches and wrote for religious publications.
He was a familiar rotund figure to the women of Alpha chapter, up until his death in 1911, as he walked daily from his home at 106 Walnut Street past the Alpha chapter house to the campus.
After nearly half a century on a college campus as student and professor, Wellesley P. Coddington was still as enthusiastic a member of his fraternity as a new initiate.
And he must have felt that Alpha Phi had turned out well because in 1904, at the age of 64, he fomented another women's fraternity. There were seven such already entrenched at Syracuse, but no new one had been established in three years, although the number of students had nearly doubled.
If Dr. Coddington had been a fond uncle to Alpha Phi, he was the father of Alpha Gamma Delta. Alpha Phi had called him, but in the case of Alpha Gamma Delta, he called them.
He flabbergasted a student named Marguerite Shepard in the spring of 1904 by suggesting that she and her friends found a new national women's fraternity. Marguerite was dubious; she was a senior and already had her associations. But her sister, Estelle, was thrilled with the prospect. Dr. Coddington then approached another woman, a student in his ethics class. In all, four women met at Dr. Coddington's home, by his invitation, on May 10, 1904, to form the nucleus of Alpha Gamma Delta.
Dr. Coddington lectured them on the two possible methods of organization—that of becoming a local which might later become a chapter of an already existing national—and that of establishing the first chapter of a new national. While admitting many difficulties in the way of a nationalization program, he pictured it as a much greater achievement and pushed for this course. The women quailed and then consented.
The fourth meeting was again a delightful afternoon spent at Dr. Coddington's home discussing Greek mottos and badges. He spent more than an hour telling college and fraternity stories.
The official founding of Alpha Gamma Delta occurred on Monday evening, May 30, 1904, in Dr. Coddington's study at his home, a delightful messy room which no one was allowed ever to clean. Dr. Coddington presided, and officers were elected, the ritual was discussed, the constitution adopted and the colors chosen.
In 1904 there had been women's fraternities at Syracuse for 32 years, and to compete with them seemed like working against fearful odds. But said Alpha Gam Founder Grace Mosher, "To Dr. Coddington there was never any thought of discouragement." He constantly reminded the obscure little group that they would some day be a great organization.
In October of that first year, Alpha Gamma Delta was invited to become Epsilon chapter of another national fraternity, but Dr. Coddington warned them off. "This is not the last invitation you will have, if you want invitations," he said, "but if you are patient, it will not be as difficult to get your own chapters as you now fear."
Then he set out seeing to this himself and wrote to friends on the faculties at Wisconsin, Minnesota, DePauw and Northwestern inquiring about the climate for a new women's fraternity. Before long chapters were established at all these schools. Thus unlike Alpha Phi and Gamma Phi Beta, which sat pat for years, Alpha Gamma Delta immediately launched an aggressive expansion policy. Within Alpha Gam's first year, Beta Chapter was established at the University of Wisconsin.
Soon after college opened in the fall of 1904, Dr. Coddington invited the women to call upon his wife, Louisa. This frail woman became Alpha Gamma Delta's first patroness.
By the second year, Alpha Gamma Delta had prospered enough to occupy a pleasant and comfortable chapter house. The first dinner guests, other than rushees, were Dr. and Mrs. Coddington. When the women had called to invite them, Mrs. Coddington kept them until she had packed the first of the never-to-be-forgotten baskets of jelly, which she made for them. In spite of her delicate health, she gladly chaperoned parties whenever possible and continued to take a motherly interest in the chapter until her death in 1908.
It is not known how much, if any, of her experience in Alpha Phi Helen Dodge drew upon when she founded Gamma Phi Beta. Or how much or how little Professor Coddy carried from Alpha Phi to Alpha Gamma Delta. Or what portion of Professor Coddy's and Chancellor Haven's experience in Phi Nu Theta might have been incorporated into all three women's groups. The monogram pins are practically indistinguishable until you get your nose in her bosom. We can see that. They are all the superimposed Greek letters, which, by the way, distinguishes most fraternities founded in the East from those founded in the West or South, which generally have emblem badges. But just to be sure, next time you see a Gamma Phi Beta or an Alpha Phi, give a wink. We may all be sisters under the badge.
By Margaret Knights Hultsch
Former Editor, Alpha Phi Quarterly
Linear Mode
