Kappa Alpha Theta was founded on January 27, 1870. In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie McReynolds Locke [Hamilton] was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision. She later said of her time as a student, “We were all refined, good girls from good families, and we realized somehow that we weren’t going to college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us – if we could just win out.”
The daughter of Dr. John Wesley Locke, a mathematics professor, she was a formidable student. During her sophomore year, Locke received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with a dating arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When Locke declined the badge because it did not come with full membership rights and responsibilities, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter substituted a silver cake basket, inscribed with the Greek letters “Phi Gamma Delta.” With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi alumnus, and her brother William, a Phi Gamma Delta, Locke began plans to start her own fraternity. She and Alice Allen, another female in the first coeducational Asbury class, studied Greek, parliamentary law and heraldry with an eye towards founding a fraternity for women.
On January 27, 1870, Locke stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Olive Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw]. Five weeks later, Mary Stevenson, a freshman, joined the group. Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870.
Kappa Alpha Theta’s extension quickly took place. Locke’s father had a friend who was a trustee at Indiana University in Bloomington. The friend had a daughter, Minnie Hannamon, who was college age. In April, a letter was written to Hannamon and Locke visited Bloomington in early May. On May 18, 1870, Locke installed Kappa Alpha Theta at Indiana University with the initiation of the three charter members, Hannamon, Lizzie Hunter and Lizzie Harbinson. It was evidence of the policy outlined in the original constitution giving the mother chapter at Indiana Asbury University the power to establish other collegiate chapters.
The next three chapters were short-lived. In December of 1870, a chapter was established at Cincinnati Wesleyan University, an experiment that only lasted six months.[1 A chapter at Millersburg College, a women’s college in Kentucky lasted from April 13, 1871 through January 22, 1872, and one at Moore’s Hill College in Indiana lasted five years. According to Wilson (1956) Moore’s Hill College was the first Theta chapter to feel the pressure of faculty opposition as well as a limited number of women at the institution. In November of 1879, the corresponding secretary of the Alpha chapter read a letter from Hannah Fitch regarding the chapter at Moore’s Hill. Fitch replied that she thought the Moore’s Hill chapter records were destroyed when the boarding house in which they were kept burned down.
Northwestern Christian College, today known as Butler University,
became home to the Indiana Delta chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta on February 27,
1874. When Kappa Alpha Theta changed the
naming system of chapters, it became the Gamma chapter. Two members of the chapter at Indiana
University, Teresa Luzadder Gregory and Laura Henly, assisted in the formation
of the chapter. The chapter was inactive
from February 25, 1886 through November 3, 1906.
[1] The chapter was revived as the Alpha Tau chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta in 1913.
