Shep: A Lost Beta Badge Story

[DoctorThursday]

A Lost Beta Badge
Francis W. Shepardson, Denison 1882, Brown 1883

I was initiated into Alpha Eta chapter on March 19, 1880. Being a healthy Beta infant I devoured a good deal of fraternity food. I want to reproduce from the Beta Theta Pi for April, 1880, part of a letter which interested me much when I read it for the first time, and which has some value in connection with what is to follow in this story:

Columbus, Ark., March 30, 1880
C. J. Seaman, Cleveland, O.:

Brother Greek - A circular came to this office this morning, addressed to David S. Walker, and was promptly forwarded to him. Catching the insignia of dear old Beta, I ran through the contents, and am delighted to put myself once more in communication with the fraternity. While a student at Oglethorpe University, near Milledgeville Georgia, in 1859, I became a Beta, and upon this wise: We had a society, known by its initial letter "E," which had for its aims and purposes almost the identical characteristics of Beta, and it is with pride I can now recall the standing of that modest pink rosette upon commencement occasions. Upon four of those occasions successively she bore oil: the highest honors of the institution.
In 1858, J. Graham Brown came from Davidson College, N.C., and was received into the "E" society. Very soon thereafter, he began corresponding with the Phi chapter at Davidson, of which he was a member, looking toward the establishment of a chapter at Oglethorpe. Correspondence eventually resulted in a commission from the constituted authorities to the Phi chapter, and the chapter was organized by ushering the "E" into the fond embrace of mother Beta.
I have no data by which to establish dates, and speak only from memory, but, if you have a copy of the catalogue of 1859, you will see that Phi was the last chapter given and that Brown's name was the last on the list (printed erroneously, however, J. J. Brown). Our chapter was not established in time to permit of it being enrolled in the year's publication, a copy of which is before me. The political excitement of 1860 became so intense that our class was hurried through, and graduated a month earlier than the regular season, and was the last class of any note emitted from the dear old college. Her finances were largely invested in Confederate securities, and, of course, lost. After the war, her friends gathered all available resources and moved to Atlanta, hoping to again place her in position to regain her lost fortunes, and launch upon a career of still nobler and higher proportions. Their hopes all faded, as the people were too poor to give that assistance she must have or pass away. After two or three years of unsuccessful effort, the trustees abandoned the enterprise, and removed what was left of the old buildings to Milledgeville, and established a high school.
Thus much in explanation of the fact that our chapter never took its proper stand in the society. Personally, I have been isolated, lo, for these many years. I took my badge into the military service and lost it. Allow me to give from memory a few names that are no dishonor to Beta...
John F. Green

The letter was printed under the heading, "Lost Tribes," and in the catalogue of 1881, on pages 277 and 278, there were printed the names given by Mr. Green in his letter, with a few others which must have been added "from memory" also, as one and another of the old boys was found.
There were twelve of them. According to the catalogue of 1881, eleven served in the Confederate army during the war. Nothing was known of the twelfth, except his name, and no doubt he too joined the army and, perhaps, with others of his chapter mates, was killed in battle. The boys evidently were in earnest in what they attempted, and several of them came out of the struggle with well-won titles. At a later time two more names were added to the roll, and, with fourteen in all, the roster of this first Chi chapter seemed complete forever.
The Union army had cracked the shell of the Confederacy; the notion of shrewd generals that, if the defensive line were passed no opposition would be met, was proved a correct one, and the men who followed Sherman were on that march which was to become historic, "from Atlanta to the sea."
One day as the Federal soldiers were gathered about their tents, a squad of them was approached by a negro who appeared to have something to tell. He was encouraged to talk and said that his master had gone to the army and that he would point out where that individual had buried his money.
A few of the squad went with the negro to a neighboring plantation where, under a tree near the house, he showed a place where the earth had been disturbed quite recently. Using their bayonets as spades, the men dug up a tin box which they pried open. It was filled with papers, jewelry, and little keepsakes. Among the articles was a Beta Theta Pi badge, which a soldier took and pinned upon his coat, thinking that the diamond in the center might bring him something someday. The box was put back in its place, and the soldiers soon moved their camp to another part of the state. As they neared a goodsized town, the soldier who had the Beta badge wrenched the diamond out of the center, and pinned the battered remnant of the "breastpin" upon his vest, where he carried it for some weeks. One day he showed it to a fellow soldier, who happened to be a college man, and who, recognizing the insignia of the rivals of a few years before, said:

"That is a college society badge, the Beta Theta Pi. There was a chapter in my college. You don't want to throw it away. Give it to the chaplain; he is a Beta, and maybe it will be of interest to him."

The soldier replied, "I'll do it"; but he forgot the promise, and kept the emblem.
A long time after this - it was after the war was over, I think - the soldier met the chaplain of his regiment, and gave him the bit of jewelry, telling him how it had come into his hands. The chaplain, John Hogarth Lozier, De Pauw 1857, was one of the kind of Betas known as "red-hot." He was a convention goer, and whenever he met anyone from the South he told the story, but no chapter list contained the name which was engraved on the back of his war relic, and no one knew of the family which had this Beta representative.
Cherishing the badge because of the romance connected with it, and failing to restore it to the owner, because he could not be found the chaplain did the next best thing - sent it to a jeweler and had it repaired. The dents made by the soldier in his attempt to get the diamond out were removed, a new stone was placed in the wreath, a new clasp-pin was fastened upon the back, and the renewed ornament became a prominent article of wear as the chaplain traveled through the land, using his gift of song and speech in entertaining and delighting audiences, who felt as Major McKinley did when he heard him "If the chaplain will continue to sing, I will stay all night to listen." But fraternity badges will get out of repair, the enamel got dented, the clasp-pin broke, and the relic of some brave Beta of the sunny South was laid away in a bureau drawer to rest in the oblivion which was the lot of the first owner and his chapter.
One day in 1893, as I was looking over the list of students enrolled in the University of Chicago, my eye met a line,
"Horace Gillette Lozier, Mt. Vernon, Iowa."
That had a genuine Beta sound, as I read it aloud to myself. The idea came quick as a flash, "If that is the son of 'the high priest of Wooglin,' we must have him in the Chicago chapter." For, indeed, it would have been an unpardonable offense to have allowed the son of the author of the legend of Wooglin to live in the presence of a Beta chapter without being able to enjoy to the full the words his father had written:

"We gather again at the shrine, brother,
Where none but those can meet
Who relish the mystic canine, brother,
Which none but the chosen eat."

The spiking committee were soon on his track, and it was not long until the father was made glad by the news that his son was a member of his loved fraternity. And that is why the Lambda Rho chapter of Beta Theta Pi has hanging in its parlor a speaking likeness of J. Hogarth Lozier.
The initiation of the boy made the father think again of the Beta badge, among the other bits of jewelry in the box in the top bureau drawer. You see, I can locate the box exactly, because we all have such boxes of cast-off but cherished treasures. He took it to a jeweler, who "fixed it up," the dents were taken out, the whole back, which had become unsoldered, was removed, and a new one substituted. A little engraving was done, "J. Hogarth Lozier, Delta '57, to H. G. Lozier, Lambda Rho '94," and once again

"Three stars shined round and lit the ground,
The diamond threw its light around."

as the son helped to "carve him to de heart," and the father felt new pride, as he took his seat at the piano to start the song he wrote for us:

"Again old Wooglin's legions meet,
A joyous happy band,
Our boys to greet, our canine eat,
And clasp a frater's hand.
And here with joy we greet the 'boy'
Of distant college days;
We'll hail him yet and ne'er forget
To toast 'The Silver Grays.'"

And these words never mean half as much to a Beta who failed to hear the author of the song give his own interpretation of them.
The badge! Well, it was a queer-looking thing; nothing like the bejeweled emblems of the time of this story of which the college boys were so proud. It attracted attention at once because of its shape and general appearance. It was one of the products of the Kirby house of New Haven, Connecticut, which used to furnish most of the fraternities with badges. It was a splendid gift for a father to make to his son, because of the peculiarly romantic circumstances of its checkered history, if not for the inscription upon its reverse, which united two generations in Beta Theta Pi.
But there was something else about the badge story. That was the old back. I was just about to go to Ohio, to attend the reunion of District VI of that day, and I took the bit of gold with me. There was no chapter designation on the back; there was no date; there were the traditional clasped hands; there was a name, "M. Warthen."
I looked in the catalogue of 1881; but there was no Warthen there. I thought of the "Lost Tribes" letter; because it seemed possible that Sherman's march might have crossed the jurisdiction of Oglethorpe chapter. But there was no Warthen name there. I wrote to John Calvin Hanna, the catalogue editor. He and his faithful assistant, Ralph K. Jones, hunted in vain for the name, even searching through the catalogues of many Southern colleges for traces of such a family. They found two men of the name, one of the University of Virginia, one of some other institution possibly the University of Missouri; but there was no one who had the initial "M". Surely "M. Warthen" was one of the members of some "lost tribe."
In the summer of 1:894, the new University of Chicago made its first test of the plan of having continuous sessions during the year, the traditional long summer vacation being abandoned. A very large number of teachers came to spend a few weeks in brushing up and getting new ideas about teaching. Among them were a member of Southern people, some of whom happened to board in the same place with myself. I told two of them my story one day and asked them, "Did you ever meet with the name 'Warthen' anywhere in the South?" One of them, a Georgian by birth, replied, "There used to be some Warthens (he pronounced it Werthen) in Sandersville, Georgia. You write a letter to the postmaster at that place, and ask him about it, and I have a notion you will get on the right track." That night I wrote a letter something like this:

Postmaster At Sandersville, Georgia:
"Dear Sir - I am trying to find a man named 'M. Warthen,' who was a college student when the Civil War broke out, and was a member of the Beta Theta Pi college fraternity. I have seen a badge with his name upon it. He may have been a student of the college in Milledgeville, Georgia. A Southern gentleman tells me that there used to be people of the name in your county, and I write this, hoping that you can locate the desired individual, if he was not killed in the war."

I guessed the Milledgeville part, because there were the "Lost Tribes," there were no records of the chapter, and the list for the catalogue of 1881 was made up "from memory." I put in the sentence about the possibility of his being killed in the war, because I thought that an explanation of the failure to remember him as one of the Oglethorpe boys, if he belonged to that chapter, as I was inclined to think for reasons already indicated. A few days later I received a letter postmarked "Warthen, Georgia," and this is what it said:

F. W. Shepherdson, Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.:
My Dear Sir - Yours of 5th instant, addressed to postmaster at Sandersville, Ga., has been handed to me for answer. In 1861, I was a student at Oglethorpe University (Presbyterian), near Milledgeville, this state, and just previous to the opening of hostilities between the states, a chapter of Beta Theta Pi was established, of which I was a member. We ordered our badges from the North, but before they came, I left college to enter the service. The badges came, however, and the president or chairman of the society placed my badge in the hands of a young lady for me, and in the turmoil of war it was misplaced, and this is the first time I have heard of the badge since 1862 or 3. The lady was Miss Sallie Wright, who about that time married the president of the Beta Theta Pi club. His name was Capt. Edwin P. Cater, formerly of Charleston, S.C., whose father, years ago, was a prominent Presbyterian divine. Who has the badge now, and what steps should I take to secure it? From whom was it obtained, and how? I have about forgotten the names of the members of our society, but I think E. P. Cater, of Charleston, S.C.; McGaw, Mobile, Ala.; Coleman Columbus, Gal; Winfield Wolfe, Marengo County, Ala.; Col. John L. Hammond, Savannah, Gal, and others beside myself. I don't know that any are now living. Colonel Hammond and myself kept up a correspondence until his death a few years ago. He was a cousin to Miss Sallie Wright, and it was through him in the '60'S that I heard she had had the badge and had misplaced it. Let me hear from you at once on the subject. I am very anxious to get the badge. Truly, etc.
Macon Warthen
P.S. I have forgotten- all the grips, signs, etc., of Beta Theta Pi. M. W.

I had some correspondence with Mr. Warthen after this, and he gave me information about the chapter and names of the members, all of which material I turned over to the catalogue editor. He wrote that the Beta girl was dead, a fact I was sorry to learn; because it would be a fitting end to this story to give a letter from her, telling how and where the tin box was buried, and whether she ever recalled, after the war was over, where she had placed the Beta badge which belonged to her sweetheart's chapter mate who was at the front fighting for his country.
I left the correspondence to be continued by J. Hogarth Lozier. But the story has not been forgotten, as I have pondered over the probability that the soil of the South, which was drenched with the blood of Betas, North and South, contains locked up in its secret places many a treasure buried by a brave boy in gray who never came home to dig it up; and I have felt thankful that a new generation has grown up which has forgotten the bitterness of those years of war.
For "we are coming from the East and we're coming from the West, and the boys of sunny Southland are coming with the rest": and may we not believe that much has been done by such fraternities as Beta Theta Pi to bind up the broken hands of union and to stimulate new interest in a common country. There never again can be discord if

".... hand grip into hand,
And eye look into eye
As love flows free from heart to heart
In Beta Theta Pi."