Effie Hoffman Rogers was not a founder of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, but she was a builder. Few people know the names of the builders, those who came after the founders and worked on making the organization into what it is today.
She grew up in Oskaloosa, Iowa. While at the Young Ladies Seminary in Mount Pleasant, Iowa she became a member of the second chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, founded two years earlier at Iowa Wesleyan University. Graduating in 1872, she returned to Oskaloosa where in early 1873, she established Chapter D of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. Chapter A minutes do not mention her being given permission to do so, but at some point she let Chapter A know there was a Chapter D.
A young Effie Hoffman Rogers
She worked as a reporter until she married John Franklin Rogers on April of 1880. She relocated to Concordia, Kansas, where her husband was a bank cashier. In December 1882, the couple moved to Great Bend, Kansas where her husband organized a bank. The following March, a daughter Emily Jozelle, was born. That year, while she was pregnant with another child, Franklin Ripley, her husband died suddenly. Young Franklin lived but two months and Effie Hoffman Rogers along with her young daughter Emily returned to Oskaloosa. She became Editor of the Oskaloosa Times and then worked for the Globe.
Chapter D was dormant after Rogers left town and it reorganized in October 1884. At the 1886 Convention of Grand Chapter, Rogers seemed to take center stage. She spoke from the floor, volunteered for committee work, and moreover, when it came time to vote on small revisions to the initiation ceremony, she had made revisions to it although she was not on the committee charged with the task. She was also elected as President of the Grand Chapter and was reelected twice, serving three terms.
She wrote the P.E.O. Creed. She chose the name of the P.E.O. Record and was Editor when it debuted in 1889. She stitched the first copies together on her sewing machine and then wrote the addresses by hand. Although she resigned in 1890, she again took on the Editor title from 1913 until her death in 1918.
She won election as Mahaska County Superintendent of Schools in 1889. Other jobs which she held included being a commercial traveler for two publishing houses. She also edited an educational journal, Schoolmaster, and was owner of a pickles and preserves company.
Rogers was living with her daughter in Colorado at the time of her death on February 7, 1918, at the age of 62.
