Founders Day Then & Now F51
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Founders’ Day – Then & Now – F51
FOUNDERS’ DAY PROGRAM
P.E.O. – AS WE WERE THEN – AS WE ARE NOW
Written by Marcy Gill, Chapter H
Personnel and equipment needed:
One reader, lectern and microphone
Seven members – in dress of the late 1800s or very early 1900s
Seven-branch candelabra, candles and matches
Pianist (or music)
Each Founder walked through the audience as reader described her. She ended near the reader and lit a candle in memory of the Founder.
What we are celebrating today is something created in 1869 by a group of teenagers on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan University. It was one of the embryonic sororities, but soon the girls chose to go entirely off the campus and into a broader field of service.
The seven girls who founded P.E.O. were unique only in their religious and pioneer heritage and in their educational opportunities. College for them was a joyous experience. Friendship among the seven had deepened and become precious to them, and they wanted it to be a lasting thing.
Picture them as they secretly and ceremoniously formed their society that January 21, 1869. There they stood in the music room with the old college Bible on the table—old fashioned principles which dignify our sisterhood.
What were these girls like? Did they differ a great deal from P.E.O.s today? They were fun loving as well as serious. They had been taught to think and they were appreciative of their education. They were leaders on their campus and they were ready to become leaders in their communities.
What was happening in the world about them? History shows us that in 1869 our country was completely taken up with its own internal affairs. The Civil War had ended in 1865 and every effort was being made to unite the North and South.
In 1867 the United States had purchased Alaska from Russia. Called “Seward’s Folly”, it was thought of as a dreary frozen region infested with polar bears and glaciers and inhabited only by savages. In 1869 the Intercontinental Railroad was completed.
Today we portray our seven founders as they might have looked on various occasions in those early days of P.E.O.
Mary Allen was graceful and poised with an innate dignity of bearing. She was born in Mt. Pleasant and received an A.B. degree from Iowa Wesleyan in 1869 and an honorary A. M. degree three years later. It was customary for Iowa Wesleyan to grant the A.M. degree to graduates providing they had been successful in their chosen field of endeavor the three years following graduation.
Two years after her graduation she married Charles Lewis Stafford who was ordained to the Methodist ministry, and for 56 years they shared that ministry. Practical Christianity was a natural way of life for Mary, and her life was totally centered in other people.
Into their newly formed society, the Founders put emphasis on discipline and order. Mary Allen, a member of several chapters in her lifetime, stressed the importance of proper procedure in conducting business meetings and the necessity for good order. At one time she stated, “We are but undisciplined if we cannot endure the quiet restraint of listening.” Today our meetings of quiet attention and prescribed agenda continue to stress discipline and order. Our horizons and experiences have broadened, however, and, while none of our Founders had been more than 50 miles from home when they created P.E.O., today many of our members have traveled all over the world, not only for pleasure but often in the line of work.
(Candle is lit in memory of Mary Allen)
Ella Stewart small in stature, with curly auburn hair, almost invariably wore earrings—and the scent of violets often followed in her wake. She was the only one of the Founders who did not graduate from Iowa Wesleyan. It was not due to lack of scholarship that she did not graduate, but because the need for her help at home after her father’s death was so great that she found it impossible to carry a full schedule.
She led a life of devoted service to others. She gave piano lessons in nearby towns and then, for eight years, she taught at the Iowa Industrial School for Boys in Eldora, Iowa. Although the stage coach and covered wagon were being replaced by the steam engine, no doubt Ella Stewart traveled a plank road from her home town to Eldora, and it probably was a toll road—2 cents a mile for horses and wagon. Today wheels and wings guided by individuals have taken over travel and transportation. Toll roads, however, still are an important source of revenue for many states.
Ella Stewart’s P.E.O. pin is the only one of the seven original pins still in existence.
(Candle is lit in memory of Ella Stewart)
Suela Pearson could scarcely have had more feminine graces, charms, talents, and virtues if a fairy godmother had waved her magic wand and wished them upon her. She grew into a charming and gay but gracious and affectionate young woman. The other founders took pride and pleasure in telling that Suela was the most beautiful and popular of the seven.
She enrolled in the comprehensive classical course and became an excellent musician and was adept at dramatics. She received her A.B. degree in 1871 and later the honorary A.M. degree. After her marriage to Frank Harold Penfield, who was with the Standard Oil Company, she became a lovable homemaker and a famed hostess in Cleveland, Ohio.
She maintained her ties with Iowa Wesleyan University when she sent a gold badge with the stylized letters P.E.O. set with small precious stones to be presented annually to the first sergeant of the winning company of the cadet corps during commencement week.
(Candle is lit in memory of Suela Pearson)
Hattie Briggs is remembered best for her radiant smile. The daughter of a minister, she received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Iowa Wesleyan. She taught music and art before her marriage in 1873 which ended with her death just five years later.
When the elder of her two sons married Hattie Clara Degenaar in 1916, he used the same ring that his father, Henrie Durham, had placed on the finger of Hattie Briggs in 1873. Their daughter, Geraldine Bousquet Durham, inherited the wedding ring and was wearing it when she was initiated into P.E.O. by Chapter M, Knoxville, Iowa. In 1962, Geraldine and two of her daughters visited the P.E.O. executive office in Des Moines and gave the wedding ring and other items to P.E.O.
It is interesting to note that Carrie Nation, who caused such a furor in Kansas by breaking windows and wielding hatchets in saloons for the cause of temperance and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was only three years older than Hattie Briggs. Today our women still are concerned and active over alcohol and drug abuse.
(Candle is lit in memory of Hattie Briggs)
Alice Bird was a town girl, born in Mt. Pleasant. She entered the University as a freshman at the age of 15. She was of medium height, black hair thrown back, piercing eyes, tailor-made clothes, taking long and bold strides as she passed through the college campus. She was a busy little person, interested in everything and everyone about her. She was a forceful reader and singer, a member of College Quartettee and in demand on all the downtown and college literary programs. Enrolling in a classical course, she was a brilliant student, a real intellectual
And what were the girls of that day reading besides Virgil, Cicero, and Socrates? The novels of Charles Dickens, no doubt. In 1868 Charles Dickens visited America for the second time. Although some could not forget the irritation he produced on his first tour (The “Northern Monthly” called him “vulgar snob”) crowds waited in line all night to get tickets to his readings in Steinway Hall.
Our girls probably were reading his novels and wishing they could see him. Magazines of the time were Harpers, Scribners, Appletons, The Nation, The Galaxy, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and many religious journals. Many magazines were started about this time, and woman suffrage was the question that was discussed in all of them.
(Candle is lit in memory of Alice Bird)
Franc Roads, the youngest Founder, became known as the girl with far vision. So progressive was she that she was years ahead of her time. She, too, was an intellectual, an inveterate reader of the classics as well as contemporary literature. She studied art whenever and wherever possible, taught art, and worked as an art supervisor.
She was described by her daughter as a “dramatic person, always on the search for learning, a woman of indomitable will, with courage and ability to get from life the worthwhile things that appealed to her.”
International peace was one of her most profound goals. In 1918 she took a course at Berkley, California, making a special study of the causes of the World War. Can you envision her giving a program in which she shared with her P.E.O. Sisters a letter from Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a well-known author who spent four years doing war work in France?
When Franc Roads Elliott was in California in 1919, Jane Addams, social reformer renowned as one of the founders of Hull House, was president of the Women’s Peace Party and also president of the World’s Peace Congress of representative women which had met at The Hague in 1915 on the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina of Holland.
Franc Roads Elliott’s efforts to involve P.E.O.s in the peace movement culminated in the convention of California State Chapter in Palo Alto in May, 1919. Observing the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of P.E.O., Franc Roads Elliott introduced a peace resolution that was passed unanimously. That fall the Supreme Chapter approved the same resolution.
Franc Roads lived to see the ratification in 1920 of the Constitutional amendment giving nationwide suffrage to women. She did not live to know that Jane Addams received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She would have been saddened at the outbreak of World War II, but she would have rejoiced that out of that war grew the constructive project of the P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship Fund.
(Candle lit in memory of Franc Roads)
By birth, Alice Coffin was a Southern girl, although she lived in the South only the first year of her life. The family moved to Iowa during the Civil War years, and in 1865 “the tall willowy girl entered Iowa Wesleyan University.” She combined all the qualities of a stunning personality. In the drawing room she would be a queen; in the ballroom, the first lady.
Perhaps the most striking couple in public festivities was Alice Coffin and Will Pearson, brother of Suela Pearson. Eventually an engagement became a reality. However, fate is not always kind to couples in love and when, in a difficult moment, she chose to break the engagement, her dreams were shattered, too. There were other offers of marriage, but Alice did not accept them.
Alice Coffin received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Iowa Wesleyan and became a devoted, imaginative teacher, deeply conscious of the needs of her students. Each child she taught was a challenge to her, and her own high ethical standards must have lifted many young people to higher levels.
She was an excellent seamstress, always attractively dressed. One student wrote of her, “She was the kind of teacher that the girls copy and the boys silently worship.”
(Candle is lit in memory of Alice Coffin)
If they could see us now, our seven Founders would be grateful to note that P.E.O. chapters still include women of diverse backgrounds, interests, ages, and expectations. Diversity always has been a source of strength in the Sisterhood.
They would be a little awed, however, to see in more than one hundred years, their group not only survives but has developed beyond anything they might have imagined. Their one chapter is now over 5,500; their seven members have increased to over 250,000.
P.E.O. has survived and thrived because the principles upon which they based that little society are still relevant and still attract the kind of women they saw as ideal.
If they could speak to us today, what might they say? Quoting from an old P.E.O. Record, they might say, "Let's see. You are now 250,000 sisters meeting for approximately 15 three-hour meetings between now and next Founders' Day. Even by the old math, that adds up to over nine and a half million woman hours. What will those hours spent together mean to your world? And the worlds that follow? If what we did in 1869 developed into this, what you do with those nine and half million hours next year may make a difference to all eternity."
This has been a tribute to P.E.O.—As We Were Then. May we end with a tribute to P.E.O.—As We Are Today—and all join in singing "Blest Be The Tie That Binds".