What Happened After January 23, 1869

F-69

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER JANUARY 23, 1869

Contributed by Chapter AF

(Editor’s note: This takes exactly twenty minutes to read and it can be shortened)

We are gathering tonight to celebrate Founders’ Day, to remember those seven young women (Mary Allen, Alice Coffin, Franc Rhodes, Alice Bird, Suela Pearson, Ella Stewart, and Hattie Briggs) who formed a club on January 23, 1869, to commemorate their friendship and to plan for bold things for women in the years to come.

We are going to take you back in time for a brief look at What Happened Next? What transpired AFTER January 23, 1869? How did P.E.O. grow from that first group of seven?

First we will set the stage and tell the original story for those of you not already familiar with the events. In 1869 Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, was a prosperous, comfortable town in the southeastern corner of the state. It boasted three schools of higher learning: IowaWesleyanCollege—the first college founded west of the Mississippi; Howe’s academy—a high school and normal school; and Belden’s Female Seminary—a boarding school for young women.

Our seven heroines were all residents of Mt.Pleasant and were day students at Iowa Wesleyan. In the fall of 1868, two young women from Monmouth, Illinois—Libbie Brook and her sister—enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan. Libbie and her sister brought a new notion with them—the idea of a secret society for women. I.C. Sorosis (from the Latin soror for sister) had been founded at MonmouthCollege in 1867. Libby invited some, but not all, of our seven to join I.C. But the seven friends were faithful to one another. They refused her invitation, and Libby organized I.C. Sorosis on December 12, 1868, without them.

Little more than a month later, motivated in part, perhaps, by the sight of those I.C. members wearing their golden arrow pins, our seven friends decided to form their own society. They met in the music room of the college on January 21st and decided to form a society, which they named P.E.O. Its emblem would be a gold star with P.E.O. written in black enamel letters. Alice Bird was to prepare a constitution and an oath of allegiance and bring it to the next meeting, scheduled for Saturday evening, January 23, at the home of Mary Allen.

Alice wrote the short oath—only thirty-five words long—and a constitution. In her own words: “I could scarcely stop; the needs of all women, it seemed to me, must be embodied in that document. When I submitted it, it was adopted unanimously and as a whole. Every report was adopted, so anxious were all to get to work and revolutionize the world. We were earnest and even then desired something broad and substantial. We did not for one moment wish it be a mere college fraternity; we wished a society of more lasting name and reputation.”

The girls ordered their star pins from Mr. Crane’s Jewelry store in Mt.Pleasant and designed white aprons to show off the pins. They hurried to complete their plans to announce their society to their classmates, for they learned that the I.C. sisters were making blue calico dresses and were planning to wear them to chapel as a group. The P.E.O.s—in their white aprons and stars—got there first that morning and made their mark on campus life.

And then what? No minutes or notes were kept for the first fifteen months of P.E.O.’s history. After all, these young women might have hoped for, but surely could not have realized at first that their society would last into the twentieth century! Much of the early history was recorded later when someone asked each of the founders and the first members to write down their recollections of those eventful days. And, as often happens, people’s memories differ as to details.

For instance, we are not certain just who was asked to be the 8th P.E.O. It was either Cassie Allen (Mary Allen’s older sister) or Ione Ambler. The founders disagreed later about that fact. At any rate, by March 1969 there were six new initiates, sixteen by the end of the year, and another sixteen by the end of 1870. Five of the founders had graduated from Iowa Wesleyan in June 1869, but because they lived in Mt.Pleasant, meetings continued to be held in their homes, and they continued to be the society’s guiding lights for several years.

Going to a P.E.O. meeting in those days was an adventure in itself. The fact that a meeting was being held was a deep, dark secret. Each girl went singly in the opposite direction from the house to which she was headed. Some started a long time in advance to throw curious observers off the track.

Many of the young women initiated into P.E.O. in those early days were, in fact, young girls—13, 14, and 15 years old. A number of them were students at Belden’s Female Seminary. It was a complicated procedure to gain access to these boarding school girls in order to get them to a meeting to initiate them, for they had much less freedom than the college girls at Iowa Wesleyan. “It was necessary for some of the girls from Chapter A to help Elizabeth Ogilvie—listed as an initiate of 1869—to slip away from the Seminary to be initiated. It was also necessary for them to help in the more difficult task of getting her back into the dormitory. As late as 1874, Nellie Bishop and Clare Pitzer, students at the Seminary, slipped away from a church social at the town hall, eluding the preceptress, and were initiated into P.E.O.”

There were finally enough P.E.O.s at Belden’s Seminary for a separate chapter—Chapter B—formed there by the end of 1870. (The word “chapter,” it might be noted, is mentioned in the earliest available minutes of P.E.O., so this designation for groups must have started very early.)

There was also a chapter I.C. Sorosis at Belden’s Female Seminary, and the rivalry was obviously keen. At one time Mr. Belden called the girls from the two groups into his study and told them they must give him their pins—their stars and their--to be deposited in the vault of one of the banks downtown, until the girls could live together in peace in the dormitory. “There is no documentation of the number of pins collected, but legend suggests that it was not one hundred per cent. Legend also suggests that certain pins decorated the underclothing of their owners for a time.”

On November 5, 1870, plans were launched to have a party for all the P.E.O.s at Mt.Pleasant and their guests, sometime between Christmas and New Year’s. And so, without their quite realizing it, they gave the first BIL party! The date was set for December 26th; the place, the Brazelton Hotel in Mt.Pleasant. Alice Bird Babb wrote years after the event:

The first important question was what to name the party. Our badge was a star, and we were studying Latin, so we decided upon “Sidereal” (from a Latin word for constellation). We were reading French so we added ‘Soiree, and thus called our party a ‘Sidereal Soiree.’ Today I wonder that we didn’t hang on a little Greek, for we were translating—or trying to translate—Homer. After we’d named the party, the next thing was what shall we have a eat, for this was not to be a cup and saucer affair, but we had roast turkey and escalloped oysters, mashed potatoes and cold slaw—there were no salads in those days—and marble cake and ice cream.

Then came the selection of the gentlemen we should invite to this grand party—they must be grand men, as indeed they were. I am not certain about all, but I can imagine that Franc Roads asked Simon Elliot, Mary Allen, Charles L. Stafford; Allie Coffin asked Will Pearson; Ella Stewart invited Dillon Payne; Sue Pearson asked a dozen probably—she wouldn’t know where to stop; and Hattie Briggs maybe asked Robert Burton.

I told my father I thought of asking Mr. Babb. ‘Well,’ said he ‘Babb’s been through the Civil War, and is old enough to have a little sense. You can go with him.’

How and when did P.E.O. move beyond Mt.Pleasant and into the larger world? As P.E.O.s left Iowa Wesleyan and Belden’s Seminary, they carried the spirit of this new women’s organization with them. Any P.E.O. could organize a chapter with the approval of Chapter A, whose corresponding secretary copied the Constitution and Bylaws into a small notebook, gave them to the departing P.E.O. and sent her on her organizing way. In other cases, if a group in another town heard about the society and wanted to participate, they could send a representative to Mt.Pleasant who was then initiated, given a copy of the Constitution and the Bylaws and those had permission to go back home and organize a chapter. In still other cases, a member of Chapter A might travel to a community where there were interested young women and would handle the initiation there. All this traveling, of course, was done by horse and buggy or by train, and it was surely no small task!

Chapter C, the first chapter outside Iowa, was organized by Ollie Downing at Jacksonville, Illinois, January 21, 1871. Ollie had attended Belden’s Female Seminary and had been initiated while a student there. During the 1870-1871 school year she attended the JacksonvilleFemaleAcademy where she told her classmates about the new society in Iowa called P.E.O. The young women were interested, and permission was granted for Ollie to form the new society. Since it was the third chapter, it was known as Chapter C.

Effie Hoffman, who had been an active member of Chapter B—the Seminary chapter in Mt.Pleasant—went home to Oskaloosa in 1872 or 1873. She organized the 4th chapter—Chapter D—by late March or early April of 1873. Chapter E was organized in Muscatine, Iowa on May 3, 1873. Chapter F in Bloomfield, Iowa, 1874; and Chapter G in Troy, Iowa 1875

The designation Chapter H was been given to a chapter organized in Omaha, Nebraska in 1873 or 1874. A young woman who had been in Chapter B went back to Omaha and organized the chapter on her own without remembering more about the society than the name and the pin. The chapter had existed for two years before Chapter A learned about it. The Omaha sisters were welcomed warmly into the fold in spite of the irregular beginning.

Two interesting footnotes to expansion in the 1890s:members of Chapter T, Garden Grove, Iowa, went by train to Leon, Iowa, to organize Chapter W on January 3, 1890. A blizzard struck in that area, and the visitors were snowbound for three days. It is said that the new Leon chapter received a great amount of instruction. On May 3, 1892, two Garden Grove P.E.O.s went to Clarinda, Iowa, to organize Chapter AE. The chapter was organized, but a driving rain continued for so long that the two P.E.O.s were guests in Mary Butler Westcott’s home for two weeks.

A voting footnote: for a number of years, each member of a chapter had to vote on every name presented. If a member was not at the meeting, the ballot box was brought to her home by a committee so designated.

What happens when an organization starts expanding beyond its original geographic boundaries? Why, it needs to have conventions, or course, to ensure a unity of purpose and procedure and to enable its many members to meet one another.

The first P.E.O. Convention was held when the society was only six years old, on January 4, 1875. Six chapters were represented: A through F. Delegates stayed in the homes of Mt.Pleasant members, and the meeting was held at the home of Emma Willey. A supper after the convention was held at the home of Dora Kaster. Gentlemen were invited, and special invitations were sent to married P.E.O.s in town. Everyone found the events so rewarding that they voted to have a second convention the following year and met in May 1876. A third convention was held in June 1877, but there is uncertainty about 1878.

In the years 1879-1881, no conventions were held, but changes were taking place. Chapter B had disbanded in 1879 when Belden’s Female Seminary closed its doors. Chapter G in Troy, Iowa, disbanded that same year, as did Chapter H in Omaha. But on September 12, 1881, chapter A organized a society at Fairfield, Iowa known as Chapter B—or 2nd B—since that letter was no longer in use by the seminary chapter. In October, a chapter was organized at Burlington, Iowa, known as H or 2nd H, since that letter was no longer in use by the Omaha group.

Footnote: In the beginning, chapters were lettered consecutively, regardless of state, with letters being used several times, as one chapter disbanded and another was organized. For example, H had been used four times by 1890. This system continued until a later event, which we shall look at presently.

During the late 1870s and early 1880s, members of Chapter A had begun to think seriously about the future of P.E.O. Chapter A was still the governing body of the organization, and other chapters directed all their questions about procedures, rules, etc. to that group of young women. The founders and their contemporaries were in the early 30s by now, but most initiated were college girls.

As sometimes happens, just the right person came into P.E.O.’s history at this point. Nellie Amble Campbell, who had been preceptress of English literature at Iowa Wesleyan for ten years, was initiated into Chapter A in 1878. She was a “mature woman of thirty-four, a woman of unusual training and capacity. Her keen vision, her clear logical thinking, her ability to analyze policies and situation, and her training as a parliamentarian made her the inspiration and guiding power for P.E.O. during the year of reorganization that followed.” She advocated creating a governing body for P.E.O., a group distinct from Chapter A.

That brings us—as we prepare to end this brief looking back at our beginnings—to the convention that seemed to be the watershed mark in P.E.O.’s early history—the Convention of 1883, held in Fairfield, Iowa. The delegates created Grand Chapter—the new governing body for the organization. A constitution and bylaws were written and officers elected. The official title of the body was The Grand Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, the first official use of the word Sisterhood in connection with P.E.O., although the word had often been used interchangeably with the words “society” and “organization.”

P.E.O. was still fairly “Iowan,” but it was moving slowly outside the state borders. In 1887 Ella Stewart suggested that as soon as a state had five chapters on its own, it should have its own state governing body, its own State Grand Chapter. Nebraska’s was the first to be established in April, 1890. P.E.O. was now poised to move upward and outward. The rest—as they say—is history.

One last message from a founder— a line from Alice Coffin’s letter to the delegates at the 1887 convention: “May we indeed be stars among women, in whatever vocation we are called to fill.”

The End

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