On January 27, 1870, Bettie Locke [Hamilton] stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw].
In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. During her sophomore year, Bettie received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with the relationship arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When she 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 “ΦΓΔ.” With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi, 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.
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 original badge was intended to be “something near enough to the Phi Gamma Delta badge to suit Betty Locke and yet slenderized to give it individually.” The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870.
Bettie later said of her time at Indiana Asbury, “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 four Kappa Alpha Theta Founders
Anna Botsford, the “Mother of Nature Education” was an early member of the Kappa Alpha Theta chapter at Cornell University. She was born on September 1, 1854 in a small upstate New York town. Cornell University had just started admitting women when she enrolled as a student. She joined a group of 36 women who were outnumbered 13:1 by the men.
In 1874, prior to becoming a student, she was told by a Cornell male student, “You won’t have a gay time, for the boys won’t pay any attention to the college girls.” Her retort to this message was “Cornell must be a good place for a girl to get an education; it has all the advantages of a university and a convent combined.”
Anna Botsford (Comstock), 1874
Kappa Alpha Theta’s Alpha chapter had previously written the registrar of Cornell University asking for the names of women who might be interested in Kappa Alpha Theta. While the registrar did not provide names, he did send the Alpha Chapter a catalog and Alpha selected from the catalog the names of three women whose names must have seemed promising. The New York Alpha chapter at Cornell University was installed on January 29, 1881. The ritual and charter were sent registered mail and the chapter members initiated themselves. The chapter later became known as the Iota Chapter. Kappa Alpha Theta was the first women’s fraternity on the Cornell campus. Anna Botsford was among the chapter’s early initiates.
At Cornell, she took a zoology course taught by John Comstock. A few years later, she became his wife. In 1888, she became one of the first four women to be a member of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.
Without formal training, she illustrated the books her husband wrote. She studied insects under microscopes and drew what she saw. She wrote botany books and learned wood engraving. The Comstocks formed their own publishing company.
She spent a large part of her life at Cornell University as a student, the wife of a professor and a professor herself. She was the Cornell’s first female assistant professor.
And in a fun twist of Panhellenic cooperation, she helped Cornell’s Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter become established. In 1883, five Cornell University coeds discussed applying for a charter of a national women’s fraternity. Comstock wrote a letter of recommendation to accompany the group’s letter to Kappa Kappa Gamma. Shortly thereafter, two members of Kappa’s Syracuse University chapter arrived in Ithaca to initiate the charter members.
In 1917, an unnamed Cornell University Kappa Alpha Theta wrote, “To know Mrs. Comstock is one of the rare privileges of being a Cornell student, a privilege always guaranteed Thetas, for whom she keeps a special place in her chimney corner.”
It is said she was a conservationist before the term was even coined. In 1988, 58 years after her death, the National Wildlife Federation named her to its Conservation Hall of Fame and calls her the “Mother of Nature Education.”
Anna Botsford Comstock
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
