I have written posts about the connection between P.E.O. and Alpha Xi Delta, and it’s a special story. The P.E.O. Sisterhood was founded on January 21, 1869, at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Alpha Xi Delta was founded on April 17, 1893, at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. Over the years, P.E.O. became a community organization and the sole remaining collegiate chapter at Iowa Wesleyan, Chapter S, Iowa,* became an anomaly within the organization. Anna Gillis (Kimble) lived in Mount Pleasant and was an Alpha Xi Delta at Lombard College. She helped facilitate the action that made P.E.O. a strictly community organization and Alpha Xi Delta, a national sorority. On June 9, 1902, Alpha Xi Delta’s Beta Chapter was installed at Iowa Wesleyan. The chapter had been the P.E.O. collegiate chapter.
In 1904, Alice Babb, the daughter of P.E.O. founder Alice Bird Babb, was initiated into P.E.O.’s Chapter A, Iowa (before it became known as Original Chapter A). She enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan University in the fall of 1905. She and her friend Mildred Brady were initiated into the Beta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta on Friday, February 23, 1906. Alice’s mother celebrated the event by entertaining the Alpha Xi Delta members and pledges, along with their gentlemen friends, at the Babb’s home on March 10. It was a surprise birthday party for the younger Alice and “every one had a splendid time.”
Alice served as the chapter’s Quill of Alpha Xi Delta correspondent; for a 1906 issue she wrote about sorority expansion:
How proud we all are of Alpha Xi Delta! and why should we not be when the quill is worn by so many worthy girls in such worthy universities?
The time has come, far sooner than was dreamed, when we can carefully select the schools where chapters of Alpha Xi Delta shall be placed, and we can still more carefully maintain our ideal standard of womanhood in these schools.
But at the same time there is a great room for work, and for hard work. We are still young and our name is not so widely known as that of other sororities; so while we take for our motto ‘Quality not Quantity’ we must remember there are splendid schools from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in many of them typical Alpha girls are waiting eagerly for some standard sorority to add their names to its ever-increasing roll.
In July 1906, the 16 members of the chapter received invitations to a house party at the Richland, Iowa, home of Mildred, Lucile, and Louise Brady. Alice Babb’s report in The Quill gave this account of the activities:
The second floor of the hospitable home had been vacated for our use, and here we bunked, holding midnight revels and exchanging confidences until the wee small hours of the morning.
What glorious days those were, and why should they not have been with such perfect weather, such congenial girls and such unlimited hospitality to make them so?
Each day we were invited to the home of some Alpha sister or college friend who chanced to live in the vicinity, wither for a meal or to spend the afternoon ro evening. One of our favorite pastimes at these gathering was to get up impromptu theatricals, and by the end of the week we were in such perfect training that I doubt if the scenes both comic and tragic could be surpassed on any stage.
When no other recreation was afforded, the piano and our local Alpha song books were always ready; never were songs sung with such spirit and enthusiasm as those. I am sure that it was with a feeling of envy that the passerby heard the merry voices with which theirs could not join.
Today that July week is but a memory and is stored away in our minds with many of the other happening of a student’s life, yet I speak the sentiments of sixteen g when I say that it will ever hold a prominent place among these recollections both for the good time’s sake and for an example of true hospitality.
While she was enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan, the Babbs moved to Aurora, Illinois. Perhaps this entered into the decision to transfer to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The November 1907 Quill of Alpha Xi Delta reported that young Alice was enrolled at Northwestern, but she spent Thanksgiving week with her Alpha Xi sisters at Iowa Wesleyan. A chapter meeting was held the day after Thanksgiving and it was “the best we have had for some time. Alice Babb of Aurora was one of the present sisters.”
Alice Babb is fourth from the left in the middle row in this photo of a Northwestern University literary society.
Martha Foote Crow, a founder of Alpha Phi, was a patroness of the senior sorority at Northwestern University.
Alice Babb had an article published in the Northwestern Magazine during the 1907-08 academic year.
Alice included her Alpha Xi membership in her class listing even though there would not be a chapter at Northwestern until 1921.
When Iowa Wesleyan’s class of 1909 graduated, she was in Mount Pleasant for the June 14, 1909, festivities. She was there when the chapter entertained the alumnae and patroness at the home of Florence Stephen. And she visited her friends May Johnson and Mabel Duncan during commencement and the weeks which followed it. The chapter report noted, “Alice Babb was undecided as to what she will direct her energies” as a Northwestern graduate.
In 1909, she attended a Panhellenic luncheon in Chicago and she was in Mount Pleasant for the P.E.O. Convention in October 1909. She visited with the chapter during that visit.
On Feb 11, 1910, the Alpha Xi chapter held an initiation ceremony at Mabel Duncan’s home. A “spread” followed and The Quill reported, “the alumnae present were Alice Babb of Aurora and Lucile Brady of Richland, Iowa.”
When Iowa Wesleyan alumni met in Chicago in 1913, she was among the guests who attended. Even though she did not graduate from Iowa Wesleyan, she kept up her connections to Mount Pleasant and the institution.
When a bronze tablet was place in the music room in Iowa Wesleyan’s Old Main in 1917, Alice Babb was in attendance and helped with the unveiling.
On September 11, 1918, Alice Babb married Donald Ewing, “a brilliant chemist of Aurora,” according to the chapter’s report in The Quill.
Only one P.E.O. founder, Alice Bird Babb, became a member of Alpha Xi Delta. The initiation took place in 1924, when she was 74 years old. Perhaps her daughter-in-law, Vida Kemble Babb, wife of Max Babb, was there, too. Vida, an 1895 graduate of Iowa Wesleyan and a member of the P.E.O. chapter there, became an alumna initiate of Alpha Xi in 1913.**
When the cornerstone was laid for the P.E.O. Memorial Library in 1927, Ewing was in attendance, too, and placed the deed to the library of her parents, Alice Bird and Washington Irving Babb, into the box. In 1929, when the iconic portraits of the seven P.E.O. founders were unveiled, she was there.
1932-33 Northwestern Alumni News
On February 2, 1942, she spoke to Chapter A, Illinois, as at meeting at the Palmer House in Chicago. Ewing’s topic was the “P.E.O. Founders and Education.”
Mount Pleasant News, May 22, 1948
A February 22, 1951 issue of the Mount Pleasant News carried a report about the Ramblers; they were a loosely knot group of former Mount Pleasant residents. Ewing sent a letter telling of her club work. Her long-time friend, Lillian Rogers, read the letter. Ewing was closely following the movements of the newly formed United Nations. The newspaper account added, “Alice is so retiring, she would never mention her fine reputation as a lecturer on many subjects, but the truth is known among her old-time friends.”
Alice Babb Ewing died in 1983 at the age of 95.
*Chapter S, Iowa, had been Chapter AJ before State Chapters were established.
** The wife of Alice Bird Babb’s son Miles was a Pi Beta Phi at Iowa Wesleyan if anyone is keeping score.
