Phi Gamma Delta was founded on May 1, 1848. The “Immortal Six” – John Templeton McCarty, Samuel Beatty Wilson, James Elliott, Daniel Webster Crofts, Ellis Bailey Gregg and Naaman Fletcher – were students at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, when they founded the fraternity. The fraternity’s Beta chapter was established the same year at Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania. In 1865, the chapters became one when the colleges merged to form Washington and Jefferson College.
If you regularly read this blog, you likely know that Grace Goodhue Coolidge is one of my very favorite First Ladies, for a whole host of reasons. She was a charter member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Vermont. She had the good sense to marry a Phi Gamma Delta from Amherst College. According to reports, Grace’s mother was, at first, opposed to the marriage. In his autobiography, the President said of their marriage, “We thought we were made for each other. For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces.”
Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge won the Vice Presidential spot on the Republican ticket in the summer of 1920. At the time of the nomination, the Coolidges were in Amherst attending his 25th college reunion and the 99th anniversary of the college. A reception at the Phi Gam chapter house was arranged with his wife helping the chapter plan the event on short notice. More than 1,500 people attended.
On August 2, 1923, Calvin Coolidge became President after the death of Warren G. Harding. The Coolidges were planning to attend Phi Gamma Delta’s 75th anniversary celebration in Pittsburgh in September 1923, but the plans had to be cancelled. Later, a founders badge was presented to the President. At the presentation, he said, “I am very glad to have this badge. My wife wears mine most of the time.”
This full size portrait of President Coolidge was painted by Ercole Cartotto. Although it is now at Phi Gamma Delta’s Headquarters, it was originally commissioned by the Xi Graduate Chapter for the Phi Gamma Delta Club in New York City. (Photo courtesy of Phi Gamma Delta)
On November 17, 1924, John, the Coolidges’ eldest and only living son, became a member of his father’s Phi Gamma Delta chapter at Amherst College. On Founders’ Day, May 1, 1925, FIJI Sires and Sons was organized. Its purpose is to “impress upon all fathers and sons, who are members of the fraternity, and in time upon their sons, a realization of the noble trinity of principles of the fraternity, with the hope that they may outrun the fervor of youth.” President Coolidge, Sire No. 1, signed the preamble of the organization.
The inscription reads, “To Phi Gamma Delta with best wishes, Calvin Coolidge.”
Did Coolidge ever attend an event at the Phi Gamma Delta Club in New York City? I don’t know, but I certainly hope so. The small card pictured below had a pocket in which to enclose the quarter fee and thus be enrolled on the mailing list for notices of Fiji dinners. Perhaps he sent in his quarter and received notices of dinners. Northampton, Massachusetts, is about 160 miles from New York City and trains ran regularly between the two cities when Coolidge was a resident of Northampton.
An early 1900s New York Fiji Dinners mailing list request.
In the August, 1914, Phi Gamma Delta magazine, the Kappa Nu chapter at Cornell University, located about 240 miles from New York City, reported on a trip to the Phi Gamma Delta Club, “The long stretch before Easter was pleasantly broken by the chapter alumni dinner which was held the middle of March at the Club in New York. Ten men from the active chapter went down from Ithaca and about twenty five alumni from New York and vicinity were there. These dinners are going to be an annual affair and no one realizes what a good time can be missed until he attends one.”
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