Fraternity History & More

Elva Bascom enrolled at Lake Erie College before she entered Alleghany College in 1890. There she became member of Kappa Alpha Theta’s Mu chapter.

She won the Arlie Mead Thoburn Essay Prize in 1893, graduated in 1894 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa when the chapter was chartered on the campus in 1904. She had been active on the college publication, The Campus. After graduation in 1894, she started working in the editorial offices of the Chautauqua Century Press in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Bascom loved books and library work interested her. In 1899, she went to Albany, New York, to study at the New York State Library school where she received a degree in library science. She remained at the state library editing and indexing publications. Two years were spent working on the American Library Association Catalog which was published in 1904.

In 1908, she was named editor of the ALA Booklist, the associations list to help librarians pick out books to purchase. A Theta who interviewed her for an article noted that Bascom had “to personally read 100 or more books a month and had to be responsible for every comment made.” When the work was transferred to Chicago in 1913, she chose to remain in Wisconsin as the head of book selection of the Wisconsin Library Commission.

In 1913, she wrote a manual, Book Selection, that was used in library schools to train librarians. The book was revised several times.

From Wisconsin she went to the University of Texas where she organized a library school. The January 1924, Kappa Alpha Theta included this note:

The Texas library association program for its 1923 meeting, San Antonio, November 26-28, sounds interesting even to a layman, and we note that for the year just closing this association has had as its energetic and inspiring president, Miss Elva L. Bascom, Mu , chairman department of library science at the University of Texas, and also chairman for Kappa Alpha Theta’s memorial alcove in DePauw University Library.

Bascom belonged to an alumnae chapter wherever she lived. It was said, she “never let her engrossing library duties keep her from gatherings of both college and alumnae chapters.” She and Theta Grand Council member L. Pearle Green were long time friends having met at the New York State Library School. They even shared a birthday.

She wrote an article in the magazine. It focused on the field of library work. According to Bascom, “The girl who is fortunate enough to possess good health, good sense, good education, enthusiasm, executive ability and personal charm – or a ‘pleasing personality’ – has the open sesame to anything the library profession has to offer to women – provided she is willing to work, and work hard.”

After six years on the University of Texas project, the budget was cut and she severed her relationship with the school and moved to Pittsburgh.  There in 1925, she joined the library school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She compiled a list of 500 books for a Kappa Alpha Theta chapter house library and made this comment:

To select five hundred books for any group as large and as varied as our Kappa Alpha Theta chapters is a task that no one can envy the selector. The result will satisfy no one as a whole; no lit ever does, just as no anthology of poetry ever satisfies a poetry lover. But please do not criticize the list because it does not contain a books that was published after its compilation – which was the first criticism that arrived after the 200-title list was printed in 1933. Whatever may be lacking – and a great many good books are not here (500 is 500, after all, and there are thousands of good books) – here are books worth reading.

Pittsburgh Press, October 18, 1936

Ella Bascom’s last gig as a librarian began in 1937. She served at the Sunday School of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, Ohio. She died in Cleveland in 1944.

William Raimond Baird published the first edition of Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities in 1879.

Baird’s death, others took on the job of editing Baird’s Manual. The twentieth and last edition, edited by Jack Anson, Phi Kappa Tau, and Robert F. Marchesani, Jr., Phi Kappa Psi, was published in 1991. It’s a very large book (8.5 x 11 x 2.5) and if another edition were to be published, it would likely have to be twice the size, what with the changes that have taken place in ensuing three decades. Moreover, it would be outdated before publication.

The 1991 Baird’s

But there is a resource for those ruing the lack of a modern Baird’s Manual. Carroll Lurding, Delta Upsilon, made his hobby the study of fraternities and sororities. For decades he painstakingly researched the local groups which became national organizations. He kept track of the changes that have happened in the fraternity and sorority world since the last edition of Baird’s was published in 1991. He expanded on information offered, including the names of local organizations which became chapters of fraternities and sororities.

The Almanac has several sections. These include:

the evolution of the fraternity and sorority system

founding dates, chronology

a list of the founding institutions

largest organizations by decade.

The organizational listing is divided into three sections:

Men’s

Women’s

Co-ed

In each section, there is a listing of the manner in which an organization evolved. Information includes the name of a local if that is how it was founded, when it became a part of the organization and the chapter identifier, as well as any time the chapter may have been inactive. There is also a section dedicated to organizations which are no longer active.

The institutional listing encompasses more than 1,000 North American higher education institutions. It includes information about the institution’s founding, the status of housing for fraternal organizations and the chronology of the chapters. The men’s groups are listed first, followed by the women’s groups and then the co-ed organizations. Organizations that are in bold-face type are currently active on campus. There is also a section for more than 100 institutions which no longer exist.

Please help publicize this important resource and help us update it. There is a mechanism to send updates if you find any errors.

Here is what the landing page looks like.

Arizona Cleaver, along with her four friends, Pearl Neal, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler, and Fannie Pettie, are the five pearls of Zeta Phi Beta. They are the organization’s founders. The idea for the organization happened several months earlier when Cleaver was walking with Charles Robert Samuel Taylor, a Phi Beta Sigma at Howard University. Taylor suggested that Cleaver consider starting a sister organization to Phi Beta Sigma.

Although there were already two sororities on the Howard University campus, Cleaver and her four friends were interested and started the process. They sought and were granted approval from university administrators. The five met for the first time as a sanctioned organization on January 16, 1920. They named their organization Zeta Phi Beta. It is the only National Pan-Hellenic Council sorority constitutionally bound to a fraternity; that fraternity is Phi Beta Sigma.

The Five Pearls of Zeta Phi Beta, (l-to-r) Arizona Cleaver Stemons, Viola Tyler Goings, Pearl Anna Neal, Myrtle Tyler Faithful, and Fannie Pettie Watts

Shortly after Zeta Phi Beta’s debut, the other NPHC sororities founded at Howard University, Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha Kappa Alpha, gave a reception for the Zeta Phi Beta members.

Zora Neale Hurston

One of the chapter’s earliest members was Zora Neale Hurston, the folklorist, anthropologist and author. She wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937 and although it was not well received at the time, it has become a classic in African-American literature and women’s literature. In 2005, it was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.

This came across my social media this week. Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale has these two books in special collections. It is unfortunate Zora Neale Hurston did not get the acclaim she deserved while she was alive.

Facebook post from Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale

January 3 is the birthday of Grace Goodhue Coolidge. She was born in Burlington, Vermont in 1879. Gracious and humble, she was a dedicated member of Pi Beta Phi. SHe was a charter member of the chapter at the University of Vermont. She also served as Alpha Province Vice President. One of my favorite letters written during her years as First Lady is a handwritten one to Pi Beta Phi’s Grand President, Amy Burnham Onken. It was written in response to an invitation to attend the 1927 convention at the Breezy Point Lodge, in Pequot, Minnesota.

On April 22, 1927 she wrote on White House stationery, “I should be happy indeed, were I able to write and tell you that I would see you all at the Convention at Breezy Point in June. Unfortunately it is most difficult if not absolutely impossible for me to step aside from the beaten path and I must therefore content myself with wishing for Pi Beta Phi the most successful Convention in its glorious history. From one of its loyal members.”

As a collegian,  Grace Coolidge was her chapter’s delegate to the the 1901 Syracuse convention. She attended the 1915 Berkeley convention as a fraternity officer. From that journey on the train from Boston to Berkeley, she and a group of Boston University and University of Vermont Pi Phis formed a Round Robin letter that lasted until the end of their lives.

Grace Goodhue Coolidge (center) with Pi Phi friends at the 1915 convention in Berkeley, California.

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was the site of the first Naval Training School for women officers; 9,000 of them were trained there. Mrs. Coolidge lived in Northampton. From 1942-45, the Navy set up shop on the Smith campus, taking over several buildings for training. Mrs. Coolidge loaned her home, Road Forks, to Captain and Mrs. Herbert W. Underwood while he was in command of the program. She accompanied the Underwoods when they went to Hunter College in New York to review the WAVES there.

In the Winter 2000 Arrow, Josephine Crook Rich, a Knox College Pi Phi, recounted her experience as a WAVE.  She was recommended for the program and she left her job as an accountant with General Electric. She was sent to Smith College for training. While there, she discovered that there were Pi Phis among the members of her WAVE training class. The Pi Phis knew that Mrs. Coolidge lived in Northampton and they invited her to tea.

Mrs. Coolidge gave her account of the meeting in a Round Robin letter she wrote to her Pi Phi friends:

A couple of weeks ago, I had a note from a Pi Phi Wave saying that those whom they had been able to round up among the Waves were planning to have a tea to-gether at the Mary-Marg* tea room and would I  join them. I got me out my best bib and tucker and found about twelve of them on the door-step waiting for me. A friend of one who was here to visit her took our pictures and we went in to-gether for our tea.

They came from the following chapters: California Delta (UCLA), Wisconsin Alpha (University of Wisconsin), Florida Beta (Florida State University), Iowa Gamma (Iowa State University), Florida Alpha (Stetson University), Vermont Beta (University  of Vermont) and Illinois Beta-Delta (Knox College). There were two from two of the chapters. A grand group of girls and Capt. Underwood and visiting Admirals from time to time have expressed themselves as well pleased with the way in which these girls take to the training.

The former First Lady was a prolific letter writer and she sent the Pi Phis thank you notes.

*The Mary-Marg was the Mary-Marguerite Tea Room at 21 State Street. It opened in 1920. Owners Mary W. Wells and Marguerite L. Hawks sold the business in 1952, and it continued under different ownership into the 1960s.