I came across a scrapbook belonging to Helen Joy Hinckley. She created it when she was in France and Belgium working as a Red Cross nurse with the Harvard Surgical Unit. She wrote her captions in French and the greetings written by doctors and patients are in French, too. Her scrapbook is in the collection of the Paul S. Russell, M.D., Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital. I couldn’t find out much about her life, except that it appears she spent it as a nurse, helping people. She was born in the same Maine town in which she is buried.
Born and raised in Blue Hill, Maine, Hinckley was a member of the Beta chapter of Chi Omega at Colby College. Her chapter knew her by her middle name, “Joy,” and she served as an officer. She was at Colby from 1906 to 1908. She studied nursing at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1910 until 1913 and she became a Registered Nurse.
Hinckley sailed to France in 1915 to help with the war effort and she was there for four years. A headline in a August 4, 1919 newspaper about her service read, “Won personal thanks of King George.”
In 1936, she was supervisor of the Infirmary at Pickwick Dam in Hardin County, Tennessee. The project to build the dam began in March 1935 and it opened in May 1938. In a report to the Colby Alumni, Hickley said:
Pickwick is the only wholly electrical town in the United States. It is very nice except when the current goes off. At the present moment we are having a violent thunderstorm. The river has risen so high the Dam is covered.
Hinckley spent some time as a Registered Nurse at the University of Michigan. She died in Maine in 1955 at the age of 65.
I believe this to be a picture of Helen Joy Hinckley
Thelma Edna Berlack Boozer was born in Florida on September 26, 1906. In 1920, she moved to New York and attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx. She graduated with highest honors in 1924. As a school reporter for the now defunct New York World, she entered its “Biggest News of the Week” competition. She earned a $50 bonus as well as a $20 cash prize. That $70 prize is equivalent to more than $1,000 in 2020 money. In addition to her writing skills, she was an accomplished speaker. She won a $50 award representing her high school in a national oratorical contest sponsored by the New York Times.
Thelma Berlack Boozer
As a New York University student, she became a member of the Lambda chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. The chapter began as an undergraduate and graduate chapter serving New York City colleges and universities. It became an undergraduate chapter in 1925, when its graduate chapter, Tau Omega, was formed.
As a freshman and sophomore, she was the New York society reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper that had both national and local editions. Her column, Chatter and Chimes, started in the New York edition of the paper.
After her stepfather died in 1926, the family’s financial situation changed and she faced a dilemma. She took a full-time job with the New York Amsterdam News and she took courses at night, keeping up a schedule to graduate on time in 1928. Three weeks after she started at the paper, she became its assistant managing editor. After earning her undergraduate degree, she began a graduate work at NYU.
During this time of working and studying for a Master’s degree, she served a year as Editor of TheIvy Leaf, the sorority’s magazine. She married James C. Boozer in 1930. He worked for the United States Postal Service. Boozer finished her coursework and wrote her thesis on The Evolution of Negro Journalism in the United States.
From 1929 until 1935, she served her sorority as Director of the North Atlantic region. She was chair of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s 17th Boulé in New York City from December 26-29, 1934. A novel event which she coordinated took place on the morning of December 30. It was a coast-to-coast radio program recorded at the NBC Studios in Radio City. Among the 300 people who witnessed the stage presentation was sorority founder Ethel Hedgeman Lyle. The audio part of the 30-minute program was aired on WJZ. Among the performers was Etta Motten.
Boozer continued working for New York Amsterdam News. She was on the board of the Harlem Newspaper Club when it was founded in 1932. Barbara, the first of the Boozers’ two daughters, was born in 1937. The following year, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity awarded Boozer its achievement medal in journalism. She was also honored with the Brooklyn Women’s Service League’s World’s Fair Medal in journalism.
The January 3, 1942 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier reported on a banquet at the Grand Street Boys’ Association which was “crowded to capacity by more than 400 diners who had paid $1.50 apiece to give visible and oral testimony of their appreciation.” Boozer, “TEB as she is affectionately known,” was leaving Harlem for Jefferson City, Missouri. After 15 years at the newspaper, she was to be on the faculty of the journalism school which was to open at Lincoln University.
The report of her going away event told that “her proudest moment was perhaps the recent occasion when she was recalled to the Theodore Roosevelt High School to address the two senior assemblies. This marked the first time that any graduate has ever been asked to return to the school.”
Boozer left Missouri and returned east. Her daughter Thelma was born in 1946 in New York City. Boozer took on writing jobs and served as Assistant Managing Editor of the New York Age.
March 26, 1949 New York Age
Mayor Robert F. Wagner appointed her to do public relations work in the Office of the Borough President of Manhattan in 1950. The New York branch of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Womens’ Club awarded her its Sojourner Truth Award in 1954.
She spoke at the Barber-Scotia College Club Founders’ Day event in 1959. It took place at Rendall Memorial Presbyterian Church in Harlem. Boozer “received her heartiest applause when she reminded her audience that we cannot turn a blind eye or deaf ear to our New York City schools while we fight for integration in Little Rock and Virginia.”
Boozer continued to work for the city in various capacities utilizing her journalistic talents until she retired in 1973. Her oral history interview in 1981 is part of Columbia University’s United Negro College Fund project. She was 94 years old when she died in 2001.
The Tau Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority awards the Thelma Berlack Boozer Scholarship for Academic Excellence.
On March 17, 1917, five coeds at New York University School of Law founded Delta Phi Epsilon. The DIMES, as they are referred to, are Dorothy Cohen Schwartzman, Ida Bienstock Landau, Minna Goldsmith Mahler, Eva Effron Robin, and Sylvia Steierman Cohn. Delta Phi Epsilon was formally incorporated under New York State law on March 17, 1922.
That these five women were law students back in the day before women could vote in a federal election is impressive. Today, one must have a bachelor’s degree to apply to law school. In 1917, this was not the case. While the American Bar Association was formed in 1878, the first two women to join the organization did so a year after Delta Phi Epsilon was founded. In 1906, the Association of American Law Schools adopted a requirement that law be a three-year course of study.
Delta Phi Epsilon’s founders were between the ages of 17 and 19 when they formed the organization. They were working on an undergraduate degree in law. Today one needs an undergraduate degree to enter a law school
Minna Goldsmith married Benjamin Mahler in 1922. She had a major hand in the creation of Delta Phi Epsilon’s constitution and bylaws and she served as the organizations first International President in 1922-23.
The radio program schedule, Times Union (Brooklyn, NY), November 12, 1930
She practiced law in Jersey City, New Jersey, and raised her family. In April 1941, she was a speaker at a meeting of the current events group of the Passaic Section, National Council of Jewish Woman. Her topic was “Plans for a Future World Order.” According to the newspaper account, she was a “former president of the Jersey City Council of Jewish Women, a former State president of the National Council and former National legislative chairman.”
In October, 1955 she spoke at the Bergen Ethical Society meeting held at the Henry B. Milnes School in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. She had a “wide experience in United Nations activities.” Mahler was a trustee of the New Jersey branch of the American Association for United Nations. She also served as president of the Maplewood AAUN chapter.
New York Daily News, September 22, 1957
For many years she served as State Chairman for United Nations week in New Jersey. She served on the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee and she was a United Nations observer.
Asbury Park Press, December 7, 1960
World peace was a cause near and dear to her heart and she worked ceaselessly for the cause. She died in August 1989.
Delta Gamma was founded at the Oxford Female Institute, also known as the Lewis School, in Oxford, Mississippi. The school was established before the Civil War and eventually was absorbed by the University of Mississippi. Delta Gamma’s three founders, Eva Webb Dodd, her cousin Anna Boyd Ellington, and Mary Comfort Leonard, all from Kosciusko, Mississippi, were unable to return home over the Christmas holidays in December of 1873. That is when Delta Gamma was founded but Founders’ Day is celebrated on March 15. Phi Delta Theta and Delta Gamma both celebrate Founders’ Day on March 15 and they share a member, George Banta, an initiate of both organizations.
Gratia Alta Countryman, the daughter of immigrants, was born on November 26, 1866. At the age of 15, she graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. There she was the first initiate of the Lambda chapter of Delta Gamma in 1883. She served her chapter as Secretary and President.
While at the University of Minnesota, she served as a First Lieutenant of Company Q, a military training unit for women. Company Q existed between 1886 and 1892.
Company Q, University of Minnesota, 1888-89
When the publication of The Anchora of Delta Gamma was put in
Lambda chapter’s hands to produce, she became a member of the editorial staff.
She later served as its Business Manager.
Countryman graduated in 1889 and was hired by the Minneapolis Public Library that fall. The library had not yet opened to the public. A 1892 Anchora reported that Countryman, “formerly at the head of the cataloging department of the public library of Minneapolis, has recently been appointed assistant librarian.” Her boss at the time was Herbert Putnam who later served four decades as Librarian of Congress.
Gratia Countryman is at the top. It was taken in 1892. She had worked at the library for three years. (Photo courtesy of the Minneapolis Public Library)
On Washington’s
birthday in 1892, 30 Delta Gamma actives and alumnae met at Countryman’s home
at 11 a.m. and had lunch and some of the women wore costumes. The party ended
at 4 p.m. and the report noted, “what a good time we had!”
A Phi
Beta Kappa chapter was installed at the University of Minnesota on December 13,
1892. Countryman was one of the eight women, four of them Delta Gammas, who
were elected to membership.
She and three friends biked through England on her first trip to Europe in 1896. At the library she was promoted to head cataloger and assistant librarian to James K. Hosmer before she became chief librarian in 1904. She was the nation’s first female head librarian. However, her starting salary was one third less than what her male predecessor earned.
Countryman was elected Delta Gamma’s National Secretary in 1903, but due to her job responsibilities, she was unable to fulfill her duties and Lambda chapter member Lois Tenant served pro tem. Countryside is listed as Delta Gamma’s Secretary from 1903 to 1904.
The Minnesota Library Association was organized on December 29, 1891 and Countryman was its fifth President, serving from 1904 to 1905. She also founded the Minnesota Library Commission and was its Recording Secretary until 1918.
Countryman was a frequent speaker at events. On February 16, 1911, she was one of the speakers at a Minnesota Alumni event. She had spent several weeks during January 1911, on the east coast, “buying books for the new Walker library,” according to an Anchora report.
In 1912, she organized the Foreign Policy Association’s Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She served as its President until 1914.
The 1918 Gopher yearbook included this tribute to Countryman:
To head a library system as large as that of Minneapolis is a task worthy of the best of men. It is a Minnesota woman, Gratia Countryman, of the class of ’89, who holds that position. How well she has filled it is testified by the extent of the library activities in Minneapolis. Go down into any foreign district in Minneapolis and there you will find a branch of the Public Library. There you will find the children of our adopted citizens learning the ideals of American democracy from the best of teachers, good books. Gratia Countryman has made the Public Library a great, living institution for providing education and clean entertainment to the citizens of Minneapolis.
Countryman never married. However, she became guardian to a young boy, Wellington Wilson, who spent his days at the library. In May 1917, she wrote, “We have taken in a homeless little boy to live with us. He is nearly eight years old and bright and affectionate. We have grown very fond of him in the four weeks we have had him….If he turns out to be as nice a child as he seems, I may possibly want to adopt him.” He lived with Countryman, children’s librarian Marie Todd, and their maid at 3721 Girard Ave South. Adopting a child was a bold move for an unmarried woman of 50. Wilson later changed his name to Wellington Countryman and named his daughter Alta in his adopted mother’s honor.
The Inter-Racial Service Council of Minneapolis awarded Countryman the Civic Service Honor Medal for her work with immigrants. The following year her Alma Mater awarded her an honorary degree for distinguished public service, the first to be awarded to a female.
She served as President of the American Library Association in 1934. She was forced to retire from the Minneapolis Public Library at the age of 70 in 1936. During her tenure, the library’s collection grew to 400,000 books in 17 branch libraries and many library stations. Countryman died in 1953 at age 87.
Nettie May Wills Shugart was born in Milton in Pike County, Illinois. She went to Nebraska as a young woman and graduated with a B.S. from Doane College (now University) in Crete, Nebraska. On October 11, 1906, she married Charles E. Shugart. As a graduate student at the University of Nebraska, she became a charter member of the Zeta chapter of Delta Zeta.
The chapter was installed by Alfa Lloyd Hayes, founder and National President, on Saturday, February 12, 1910. The festivities took place at the Shugart home at 2521 J Street. She was one of ten charter members and the chapter’s installation came as a surprise to the other nine sororities on campus. The charter member kept their application to Delta Zeta a secret until after the fact.
Shugart served as Delta Zeta’s Grand Secretary from 1914 until 1916. That year, she introduced the Legend of the Loving Cup. Shutgart was an artists whose medium was porcelain and china and she painted three handles cups for chapter that were installed in the 1910s and 1920s. According to the Delta Zeta website, the “three handles represent the love, the unity and the unbroken friendship which encircle members of Delta Zeta.” The chapter letters were painted on the inside. Several of the cups are on display at Delta Zeta headquarters in Miami, Ohio.
Loving cups painted by Shugart on display at Delta Zeta’s headquarters.
Shugart became the Big Sister Chairman in 1916 and served until 1920. She was Delta Zeta’s National Big Sister from 1920 until 1924.
On Saturday January 21, 1922, she was the speaker for Delta Zeta at the Pan-Hellenic Association tea which was held at the Hotel Muehlebach in Kansas City, Missouri. During her visit she was entertained by the Delta Zeta alumnae with a tea as well as a dinner at the Hotel Baltimore followed by an Orpheum theater party.
Shugart was a member of the American Association of University Women, Nebraska Federation of Woman’s Clubs, Lincoln Woman’s Club, Royal Highlanders, and the Daughters of Rebekah. She was a teacher in the Lincoln public schools for 15 years. Illness forced her to retire five weeks before her death. She died on May 5, 1932 at the age of 54.
Katherine Van Winkle Palmer grew up in Oakville, Washington. She was the only female member of her high school graduating class who went to college. At the University of Washington, she became a member of the Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Delta Pi.
She served as chapter president and was a member of the Class of 1918. According to an article in a 1920 edition of The Adelphean, she became interested in geology:
while studying with Dr. C. E. Weaver, who was a patron of the sorority. The last two quarters of her senior year, Katherine spent at the University of Oregon as an assistant in the department of geology and paleontology. She also took enough courses to enable her to graduate with her class at Washington.
Her senior thesis was on the Oligocene fossils of the Chehalis Valley in Washington. With Dr. Weaver as her advisor, she studied the fossils of this area of Washington. She reported on 24 previously undescribed species of clams and snails and presented evidence of a faunal zone of the lower Oligicene age. Her report of her discoveries, Paleontology of the Oligicene of the Chehalis Valley, Washington, was published in a University of Washington geology bulletin.
After graduation, she traveled across the country to Ithaca, New York, where she was awarded a scholarship for graduate study at Cornell University. There she met two men who were influential in her life. In 1921, she married Ephraim Laurence Palmer, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1917. The second man was Cornell professor Gilbert Harris.
The Palmer family
In 1932, Harris and Katherine Van Winkle Palmer established the Paleontological Research Institute. From 1952 until 1978, Palmer was the Institute’s Director. They founded two publications and she was integral in the publication of 150 issues of the Bulletin of American Paleontology and 20 issues of Palaeontographica Americana. She was a life trustee of both publications. Her research resulted in more than 150 publications.
Palmer became a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1935 and an honorary member of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists in 1966. She was the first female to be awarded the Paleontological Society Medal for her work on Tertiary Mollusca. In 1993, the Paleontological Research Institution established the Katherine Palmer Award for amateur contributions to paleontology. These are but a few of her professional recognitions. Before her death in 1982 she published the first history of the Paleontological Research Institution.
Lorraine Anderson Williams was born on August 6, 1923, in the District of Columbia. In 1940, at the age of 16, she graduated from Dunbar Senior High School, sixth in a class of 88. At Howard University she became a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. She was elected President of the chapter in 1942 and she was also active in several other organizations including the Student Council.
Her Bachelor’s degree was conferred in 1944. A fellowship from Howard University and a scholarship from Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. enabled her to complete a Master’s degree in 1945. On June 10, 1945, she married Sgt. Charles E. Williams.
Although she was was only 5’2″ inches tall, it was said she could take charge of any situation. A secure, self-confident woman, she could be both a leader and a follower, when needed.
Williams began her career at Howard University as an instructor teaching social service courses. In 1955, she earned a Ph.D. in American Intellectual History from American University. When Howard University’s College of Liberal Arts began an honors program in 1957, she served as a member of its social science faculty.
While working at Howard, she was an active member of her sorority. Williams was the 9th International Grand Basileus (National President) of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. from 1959 until 1962, the same year she became Chairman of Howard University’s Department of Social Sciences. Williams did another stint as Sigma Gamma Rho’s International Grand Basileus from 1967-71. From 1967-68, she was Chairman of Howard’s Department of History while serving concurrently as Director of the Afro-American Institute for secondary school teachers.
Kansas Sentinel, October 29, 1960. Williams is second from the left.
In 1974, she became Howard’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, the first African American woman to hold this position at a major university. From 1974-76, she served as the fifth editor of the Journal of Negro History. She retired from Howard University in 1983.
President Carter appointed her to the U.S. Circuit Judge Nominating Panel for D.C. in 1978. Williams was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. She also served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Johnson C. Smith University and the University of the District of Columbia.
Williams was a member of many professional organizations, author of many articles, an ardent churchwoman and a stalwart civic and community activist.
Moreover, she was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. for more than 50 years. In 1978, she received the Sigma Gamma Rho Education Award and she also won its most coveted honor, the Blanche Edwards Award.
The Association of Black Women Historians named an award in her honor, the Lorraine Anderson Williams Leadership Award. She died on May 21, 1996.
It may seem that Allura Exelby Custer lived an ordinary life, but in her life hit a chord with me. Her story is about service, being a good citizen, and being part of a bigger community.
Custer was born on September 24, 1903, in Parshallville, Michigan. She enrolled at Eastern Michigan University and became a member of the Alpha chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau. In 1926, she earned a degree from the University of Michigan.
On August 23, 1930, she married Richard N. Custer. At the time of her marriage she had been teaching Latin at Central High School in Lansing, Michigan, for three years. The Custers had a son and two daughters. Custer earned Master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Michigan State University in 1957. She then worked as a school social worker for the Lansing public schools. She was active in her church and in civic organizations.
Custer celebrated 50 years of membership in Alpha Sigma Tau in 1971. From her initiation, she remained a dedicated member of the Lansing AST alumnae organization. In August of 1980, the Custers celebrated their 50th anniversary with an open house at the Lansing Knights of Columbus Hall.
In 1988, she was the only teacher able to be present for the 60th reunion of the Central High School class of 1928. At the time, Custer was 84, just five or six years older than the students she taught her first year of teaching.
In a newspaper report of that 60th reunion,
Custer was quoted as saying, “I’ve read your names in the newspaper telling me
of all the activities you’re involved in, and the nice things you’ve been doing
for others….It makes me feel good to know that I had a small part in your life.”
On January 1, 1875, Mabel Hartzell was born in Saginaw, Michigan. She was eight years old when her family moved to Alliance, Ohio. Shortly after the move her mother died. Hartzell was adopted by Matthew and Mary Earley. They let Hartzell keep her own name. The Earleys lived in an Italianate house at 840 North Park Avenue at the corner of North Park and Vine Street. The house was built in 1867 from bricks which were made locally.
Hartzell graduated from Alliance High School in 1895. For a few years she taught grade school in Bolton and Alliance, Ohio. Hartzell enrolled in Mount Union College where she became a member of the Gamma chapter of Alpha Xi Delta. She attended the 1903 Alpha Xi convention. There she became its Grand Historian. She also served as Business Manager of The Alpha Xi Delta Journal (later known as The Quill of Alpha Xi Delta.)
Hartzell
graduated from Mount Union in 1905 and according to a report, she “accepted a very good position as teacher of Latin
in Alliance High School.”
In the summer of 1917, she and fellow Gamma chapter initiate Mary Kay studied at the University of Washington in Seattle. They appreciated “the courtesies extended to them by the Nu girls.” In 1924, Hartzell earned a Master’s from the Ohio State University.
Hartzell was a loyal member of the Alliance Alumnae organization. In July of 1920, the Alliance Alumnae held their annual picnic lunch on the lawn of Hartzell’s home. Fifty-four Alpha Xis were present.
She taught at Alliance High School for 30 years and her subjects included Latin, physics, and social science. Hartzell served two stints on the Alliance Board of Education: 1912 through 1924 and 1951 through 1954.
Hartzell was also very active in Alliance community affairs. She was a founding member of the Alliance Chapter of the American Red Cross and served as its Director for 33 years. She also helped found the Mount Union College Women’s Club and the Alliance Woman’s Club, both of which she served as President. Additionally, she was President of the Alliance Sorosis Club and the Alliance Quota Club. Hartzell was a Director of the YWCA, Alliance Community Chest, and City Savings & Building Company. She was a Life Honorary Member of the Stark County Historical Society.
Hartzell died on December 2, 1954. In her will, she gave the Alliance Historical Society her home for use as a museum. The home had only had one family as its occupants. It is filled with Victorian era items belonging to the Earley family, supplemented by the donation of other appropriate antiques. When touring the home, visitors are transported to a bygone era.
Josie Batcheller Houchens was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 4, 1882. Her childhood was spent on a sugar plantation in southern Louisiana. At 16, she moved to New Orleans and enrolled in preparatory work at Sophie Newcomb College. She matriculated and earned a Bachelor’s degree from Newcomb.
She moved to Illinois where she enrolled at the University of Illinois. Her first degree from Illinois was in Library Science. It was a program in which Katharine Lucinda Sharp, Kappa Kappa Gamma, played a major role. Houchens was Assistant Librarian at Eastern Illinois University in 1906. The following year she returned to the University of Illinois. She became a member of the Theta chapter of Sigma Kappa while working on her second Illinois degree which she earned in 1912. She served as Chapter President and delegate to convention in 1908, 1909, 1910, and 1911.
Josie Houchens is second from the right on the top row
From 1911 until 1922, she served as Grand Registrar and was a member of Sigma Kappa’s Grand Council. Keeping track of current addresses for collegians and alumnae in the early 1900s was a laborious process. There were no databases and most likely each member’s comings and goings were on an index card. Those index cards were likely in alphabetical order by chapter. In 1913, a 72-page pamphlet directory compiled by Houchens was published. She completed a revised directory in 1919. When she started her tenure as Grand Registrar, Sigma Kappa had a few hundred members who belonged to 19 chapters. When she left office in 1922, there were 30 chapters and more than 3,000 members. Houchens also helped install the Tau chapter of Sigma Kappa at Indiana University.
While an employee of the University of Illinois, her job titles included order assistant, reference assistant and binding librarian. Houchens took charge of all library personnel in 1941 and she became an associate professor in 1948. For 13 years, she taught in the summer session at Columbia University and she spent a summer as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California. Houchens retired from the University of Illinois in 1951, and spent 1954 as an associate professor at Florida State University.
Houchens died on February 5, 1974 at the age of 92. She left a bequest to the University of Illinois Library for the support of those who followed in her footsteps. The University also awards a Josie B. Houchens Fellowship.
There are many posts on this blog. Use the search button to find the posts about your organization.
Welcome!
Welcome! Chances are good you found this blog by searching for something about fraternities or sororities.
I was the last person anyone would have suspected of joining a sorority in college. I am sure I would have agreed with them, too.
When I made my way to Syracuse University, I saw the houses with the Greek letters that edged Walnut Park, and wished I could tour them. My roommate suggested I sign up for rush (as it was then called, today it’s known as recruitment) and go through the house tour round and then drop out of rush. It sounded like a plan. I didn’t realize that I would end up feeling at home at one of the chapters. And that I would become a member.
In this blog I will share the history of GLOs and other topics. I wrote a dissertation on “Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902.″ It chronicles the growth of the system and the birth of the National Panhellenic Conference.
My Master’s thesis details the history of the fraternity system at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1948-1960. The dates are significant ones and the thesis is available on the top menu.
I have done research at the Student Life Archives and have written several histories of University of Illinois fraternity chapters for the Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing.
