USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 60
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83
During the winter vacation in 1844-45, Walter Hatch, a Colby student in the class of 1847, was approached by a member of the recently formed DKE chapter at Bowdoin with reference to forming a chapter at Colby. When classes were re- sumed in Waterville, Hatch conferred with several friends. The group selected a number of names and approached each in the utmost secrecy. Considerable corre- spondence with the Bowdoin chapter ensued. Negotiations were conducted through Josiah Drummond, 1846, who, though not yet graduated, was on leave to teach the term at China Academy. Drummond made weekly trips to Waterville and almost as frequent trips to Brunswick. The result was the forwarding of a peti- tion to the parent chapter of DKE at Yale. The petitioners were two members of the Class of 1846, Drummond and George Stanley; four of 1847, Walter Hatch, Henry Ware, Gilbert Palmer, and David True; and two of 1848, Ephraim Young and Horatio Butterfield.
The charter was immediately granted on June 25, 1845, but it was not until a year later, on June 25, 1846, that the chapter was formally organized, when W. F. Jackson and John H. Fogg of the Bowdoin chapter initiated nine members into the Xi chapter of DKE at Waterville College. The nature of the initiation ceremony may be inferred from the fact that it was performed in a college dormi- tory without the other students having any inkling of its occurrence.
At first the Deke meetings were held alternately in Rooms 1 and 27 North College, but in 1849 the fraternity opened quarters in the Boutelle Block on Main Street. In 1876 they moved to more spacious quarters in the Ticonic Block. At last, in 1896, they became the first Colby fraternity to own their own home. On the east side of College Avenue, across from the head of Getchell Street was the large, relatively new house owned by Daniel Wing, proprietor of the Waterville Mail. Wing offered the house for sale, and A. F. Drummond and Harvey D.
464
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
Eaton, on behalf of the DKE House Association, bought the building for the fra- ternity at a cost of $6000. Drummond and Eaton held the deed for 42 years until 1938, when the DKE House Association was dissolved and the DKE Corporation took its place. A successful campaign resulted in paying off the mortgage of $4000 which had been placed in 1896. In 1945, when the entire college was eager to move to Mayflower Hill, the DKE House on College Avenue was sold to the American Legion.
The Colby chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon celebrated its hundredth anni- versary in 1946, with Supreme Court Justice Charles P. Barnes, 1892, presiding, and the historical address by Harvey D. Eaton, 1887.
Just as a rival literary society in the form of Erosophian Adelphi had soon sprung up to compete with the Literary Fraternity in the 1830's, so were students in the 1840's not content to leave DKE without competition. In 1849 a small club was organized under the name of Alpha Omega, and its leader, Thomas Garn- sey, soon made contact with several national fraternities. Although a number of national groups were interested, the boys of Alpha Omega chose to present their petition to Zeta Psi. On November 19, 1850, two members of the Zeta Psi Chap- ter at Williams came to Waterville and initiated fourteen students of Waterville College into Chi chapter of Zeta Psi.
Colby Zetes later installed chapters at Dartmouth, Union, Michigan, and Bowdoin. The grand chapter of the fraternity once convened in Waterville. From the foundation of the Rhodes Scholarship until 1960 Colby had only four Rhodes scholars, and three of them were Zetes: Abbott E. Smith, 1926; John G. Rideout, 1936; and William C. Carter, 1938. Another member of the chapter was Colby's centennial historian, Edwin C. Whittemore, 1879.
The Zetes first met in the Marston Block on Main Street, then moved to the Phoenix Block near the corner of Main and Temple Streets. A third move took them to the Meader Block, whence they went to the Barelle Building near Cas- tonguay Square, and finally to the Burleigh Block at Temple and Main Streets, before their location on the old campus, under the plan adopted in 1906. In their home in South College, for many years their beloved house mother was "Ma" Welch.
Secret societies, even the Masons, did not meet with universal approval in the 1840's and 1850's. The wide-spread anti-masonic movement had won many converts and was playing a part in national politics. It was inevitable, therefore, that secret college fraternities should fall under vigorous attack. In 1851 Daniel Wilcox, a student at Amherst, formed a non-secret group there, encouraged the organization of a similar group at Williams, and united the two groups into the Antisecret Confederation. "Those men at Amherst and Williams had lately expe- rienced harsh treatment at the hands of the secret societies, the members of which had become openly hostile to all non-fraternity men."1
In July, 1852, upon urging from Wilcox, a group of students at Waterville College formed an antisecret society called the Equitable Fraternity, and they were at once admitted by Amherst and Williams into the confederation. When the con- federation became the national fraternity of Delta Upsilon it for a long time re- tained its non-secret character, but by 1910, although officially still non-secret, it had come to be considered as one of the usual Greek letter fraternities.
Delta Upsilon met at first in one of the college rooms, but later moved to a hall on Main Street. Between 1855 and 1862 the chapter initiated 81 members. In 1861 it was host to the DU General Convention. The Civil War, creating
465
FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES
difficulties for all Colby fraternities, was especially hard on Delta Upsilon. In 1864 the fraternity was forced to disband, and for the following 14 years it was inactive. The good feeling that existed among rival fraternities at Colby is shown by the fact that, when the DU chapter was revived in 1878, it was the work of a former Deke. "Through the efforts of James Jenkins, 1879, a former member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, and with the encouragement of the Colby chapter of DKE, a group of Colby students applied for restoration of the Colby chapter of Delta Upsilon, and in the autumn of 1878 the application was granted."?
One of DU's best known alumni was the Maine poet and novelist, Holman Francis Day, 1887. When the fraternity celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1902, a prominent participator was the President of the College, Charles Lincoln White, who was a member of the Brown chapter of Delta Upsilon. For many years, dur- ing DU's occupancy of the south end of North College, their devoted house mother was Amelia Osborne, daughter of Sam Osborne, the colored janitor of the College from 1867 to 1903.
After the organization of DU, three fraternities held sway on the Colby campus for 32 years. In fact, not until the 1880's did enrollment justify the coming of a fourth fraternity. Thus, for a third of a century, DKE, Zeta Psi, and DU fought for pledges from each freshman class. In 1882 a group of Colby stu- dents, either rejected by or unwilling to join one of the three fraternities, estab- lished a local society called Logania and rented a hall on Main Street. In February, 1884, that society's corresponding secretary Edward Fuller wrote to the national office of Phi Delta Theta, asking information concerning proper steps to obtain a charter from that fraternity. He told the Phi Delt office that, after a study of the publication American College Fraternities, his group had decided to apply to Phi Delta Theta. On March 15 formal application was made by twelve petitioners headed by Elwood Dudley, 1884. One of the twelve was Woodman Bradbury, 1887, who later became the distinguished professor of homiletics at Newton Theo- logical Institution and was for many years a Colby trustee. The charter was granted on March 22, 1884, and the initiation of Colby men into Phi Delta Theta, together with the installation of the Colby chapter, took place in the following October. The ceremonies were followed by a banquet at the Williams House, a Waterville hostelry that had stood on Main Street, opposite the foot of Silver Street, since early in the nineteenth century.
During its first twenty years membership in the Colby chapter of Phi Delta Theta never exceeded twenty-five. In 1901 it was reduced to fifteen members, but when it began its third decade in 1905, it numbered thirty-five and thereafter remained one of Colby's strongest chapters. In 1905 it had the distinction of hav- ing Colby's first Rhodes scholar, Harold W. Soule, as well as the runner-up for that appointment, Arthur L. Field.
When three of the fraternities were allowed to occupy exclusive quarters in the "old bricks"3 in 1907, Phi Delta Theta was not among them, because that fraternity had been given permission to occupy a building known as Hersey House, which had been moved from a former location to the southwest end of the athletic field, near the old wooden grandstand. In 1908 the Phi Delts made a deal with the College to occupy Ladies' Hall. the building at 31 College Avenue, recently vacated by the girls because of the opening of Foss Hall. So it was in the fall of 1908 that two new occupants took residence in the adjoining houses at 31 and 33 College Avenue. President Roberts, himself a Phi Delt, went into the President's House at Number 33, and his old fraternity moved into Number 31. At times
466
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
those fraternity brothers of his made the nights noisy for the new President, but they remained good neighbors until Roberts' untimely death in 1927. In that old building, formerly the only dormitory for Colby girls, Phi Delta Theta had its home until World War II and the subsequent removal to Mayflower Hill.
In 1891 a group of students felt the time had come for a fifth fraternity. They met in a fourth floor room in the south end of South College on December 2, for the purpose of "mutual support and benefit, and of ultimately uniting with some national Greek letter fraternity." The first president of the local group, which was called Beta Upsilon, was Wellington Hodgkins, 1893, and the secretary was Arthur H. Berry, 1894. Their first approach for national affiliation was to Theta Delta Chi, but nothing came of the negotiations. In June, 1892, they turned to Alpha Tau Omega. A charter was granted and on June 25, 1892, the Gamma Alpha chapter of ATO was installed at Colby by a delegation from the chapter at the University of Maine, and twelve Colby men were initiated into ATO. The sub- sequent strength of ATO, in its early and highly competitive years, was due in no small measure to the proximity of several early alumni: Dr. Frank Tozier at Fair- field, Dr. Robert Mahlman at Madison, and George Hoxie at the Waterville post office, all members of the Class of 1894.
The new fraternity at once rented a room in a downtown block - a tiny room only twelve feet square with a small closet - at a cost of five dollars a month. It held on to those meager quarters until it took occupancy of the north end of South College in 1907.
Like other Colby fraternities, ATO had its times of supremacy and its times of depression. One of its alumni used to say that every Colby fraternity follows a kind of sine curve, and if it is on the crest it had better prepare for the day when it will be in the trough. In 1900 such disharmony prevailed in the ATO chapter that not a single member of the Class of 1904 was initiated. Matters became so bad that national officers came on the scene. The fraternity was locked out of its hall for failure to pay the rent, and had to hold its few meetings in dormi- tory rooms. By the fall of 1901 the chapter was in grave danger of losing its charter. Somehow a small group held on until the fall of 1902, when three men, Fenwicke Holmes, Frank Wood, and Millard Fitzgerald pledged a good delegation of freshmen and the chapter was saved.
ATO was long represented on the faculty and administrative staff of the College. At one time the Chairman of the Trustees, the Vice-President, the Dean of the Faculty, the Dean of Men, and the Alumni Secretary were all ATO's. In all fairness it should be added that such a situation meant no favors for ATO. Actually it was a time when the chapter had less strength than it had shown many years earlier, when there was one lone ATO on the staff. Unlike DKE, ATO never furnished a president for the College; unlike Zeta Psi, it never gave a secre- tary to the Board; unlike DU, it never had a Major General of the U. S. Army; and unlike both Zeta Psi and Phi Delta Theta, it never had a Rhodes scholar.
In 1912 all but a handful of Colby male students belonged to one or an- other of the five fraternities. That handful remained unorganized and without either privileges or influence. So there was founded the Colby Commons Club, to assure to the independents a voice in campus affairs. It flourished for five years, welcoming especially into membership men of those races rejected by the restrictive constitutions of most of the national fraternities. In this historian's own class was a colored man, Aaron MacGhee, who became a prominent Harlem surgeon, but in his student days at Colby only the Commons Club would accept
467
FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES
him into membership, and he became one of its most active and most influential members.
All too often it has been the fate of an organization of independents on a college campus to go the way of the Greek letter fraternities, first to become a local, then affiliate with a national body. That is what happened to the Commons Club, and though the change strengthened the local group, it damaged the cause of the independents. In 1917 the Commons Club became a local fraternity called Omicron Theta, with the avowed object of petitioning some national fraternity for a charter. It became a chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha in 1918.
It was LCA that suffered the greatest affliction ever to hit a Colby fraternity. When fire swept through their quarters in the north end of North College on a December night in 1922, five members of the fraternity lost their lives. The full story of that tragedy has been told in Chapter XXXII.
Rapidly Lambda Chi Alpha took the lead in scholarship. In 1932 it won permanent possession of the Druid Cup for several years of highest scholastic standing among Colby fraternities. But like every other fraternity, LCA had to encounter troughs as well as crests of the sine curve, and soon it had to surrender scholastic laurels to an even newer group.
Lambda Chi Alpha would be distinguished in Colby history if it had done nothing else than to give "Pop" Newman to Colby. Herbert L. Newman, 1918, literally gave his life for the College. As head of its religious activities for nearly a quarter of a century, he was a daily example of the Man of Nazareth, living his life constantly for the benefit of others. Many Colby graduates, scattered over the continents of the earth, owe their allegiance to high ideals and their achievement of worthy aims to "Pop" Newman.
In 1924 a group of students led by Herbert F. Colby, 1925, organized a local fraternity called the Lancers Club. It later secured a charter from Theta Kappa Nu, became prosperous, especially under the leadership of Harry B. Thomas, 1926, rented the luxurious property known as the Hussey estate, next door to the Water- ville Central Fire Station. A few years later the national fraternity of Theta Kappa Nu merged with Lambda Chi Alpha, and every Colby TKN alumnus then had the privilege of the new affiliation, and Lambda Chi Alpha profited by the strength of both groups.
In 1918, the year in which the old Commons Club had become Lambda Chi Alpha, a new local was formed, called the Alpha Fraternity. Not until 1926 did it "go national," and then it affiliated with a group that had been organized at nearby Middlebury College only twenty years earlier. For several years after its national affiliation, Kappa Delta Rho occupied quarters in Roberts Hall; then with the help of its faculty sponsor, Professor Thomas Ashcraft, a man of successful experience in real estate, it purchased the Davis mansion near the junction of Elm and Silver streets. The house had been one of the most magnificent residences in Waterville and gave the KDR by far the most elegant fraternity home among all the Colby chapters. Despite its distance, a full mile from the campus, KDR had no difficulty securing its pick of pledges, and the results soon became apparent. Like LCA before it, KDR was determined to secure a reputation for scholarship. It wrenched the new Druid Cup from its newest rival and retained it for nineteen consecutive semesters. It held the editorship of the Echo for three consecutive years.
468
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
Inevitably KDR, like all the others, followed the sine curve. It fell upon poorer days and eventually had to give up its fine house. When Colby men moved to the Hill, KDR barely survived, but in a few years had so renewed its strength that it held its own in all interfraternity activities and was looking confidently toward the day when it too would have its own house among those erected on Mayflower Hill.
The most bitter and prolonged controversy ever to invade fraternity life at Colby concerned official recognition of what is now one of the strongest of the houses, Tau Delta Phi. Since the 1880's Colby had welcomed Jewish students without discrimination. Many of those students had been initiated into the exist- ing fraternities, despite actual or assumed discriminatory clauses in their national constitutions. For instance, several of the most active and most loyal of the ATO alumni have been members of the Jewish faith.
At the close of World War I a powerful group of the oldest American fraterni- ties tightened the discriminatory clauses in their constitutions and began a sys- tematic campaign to enforce those clauses upon their chapters. Even fraternities that had no such clauses became reluctant to accept Jewish members. Meanwhile the number of Jewish boys in each Colby freshman class increased. The College steadfastly refused to discriminate against them by a quota system.
In the autumn of 1918, even before discrimination had become obvious in fraternity pledging at Colby, seven Jewish boys of good scholarship and fine char- acter decided the time had come to organize a group of their own. Led by Julius Sussman, 1919, they organized informally, then sought permission to form a local fraternity. President Roberts granted the request, and in June, 1919, the Trustees voted permission for the formation of a new local fraternity. The group took the name of Gamma Phi Epsilon.
Permission from college authorities was one thing; recognition by the existing fraternities was something else. Without such recognition Gamma Phi Epsilon could not secure membership in the so-called honorary societies, competition for interfraternity prizes, membership on the student council, or participation in the interfraternity social calendar. In the opinion of undergraduates of every twentieth century generation, not to be on a par with other groups in respect to holding dances is a crushing blow.
In 1921 the faculty was drawn into the controversy, and appointed a com- mittee to investigate the proposed organization of a Jewish society or club at Colby. They conferred with two students, LeWinter and Feldman, who asked for faculty recognition and for permission to affiliate with the national fraternity, Pi Epsilon Phi. The committee told the representatives of Gamma Phi Epsilon that recognition of a new fraternity had been clearly left to the existing fraternities, and that such had been the case when the Commons Club became Lambda Chi Alpha. Hence the committee advised the members of Gamma Phi Epsilon to petition the Student Council for recognition, and in the meantime to cease their efforts toward admission into a national fraternity. The representatives of Gamma Phi Epsilon agreed that this was the proper method and promised to comply with it. Honorably and faithfully they adhered to that promise.
The committee found the members of the Student Council unanimous in opposing recognition of a Jewish fraternity and insistent that Colby already had a sufficient number of fraternities. The faculty committee then made a suggestion to the council that was to have great importance for the future development of Gamma Phi Epsilon. The committee proposed the conditional acceptance of
469
FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES
Gamma Phi Epsilon into college activities, the condition being that it should be a fraternity "not founded upon religious or racial lines." The proof of its freedom from those features was to be the membership of a certain percentage of non- Jewish men. The Student Council rejected the faculty proposal, but the committee suggestion was not forgotten, and the time eventually came when the Colby chapter of Tau Delta Phi, national successor to Gamma Phi Epsilon, regularly numbered men of different races and faiths. In fact, of all Colby fraternities, Tau Delta Phi was the most liberal in its acceptance of Negroes and Orientals, as well as of Christian whites.
The long struggle of Gamma Phi Epsilon for an equal place among the other fraternities was aggravated by the unrealistic view of the faculty and administration. In those official circles there prevailed the sincere and logical view that no segre- gated group should be permitted such permanent organization as would ensue with the chapter of a distinctly Jewish national fraternity. As one faculty member put it, "We don't want a Knights of Columbus fraternity nor a Baptist fraternity, a Negro fraternity nor a Chinese fraternity; not even a fraternity made up of Sons of the American Revolution." Many faculty members insisted it should be the duty of every Colby fraternity to accept members on individual merit, regardless of race or religion.
The idea was noble; its realization was out of the question at that time. Even had every Colby fraternity been willing to be so liberal, several of them would have lost their national charters by such action, and it would be many years before the great anti-discrimination movement would so sweep American campuses that chapters would give up their charters rather than conform to discriminating constitutions. If the existing Colby fraternities would not accept Jewish members, no matter how high the individual merits of those boys, had not the Jewish boys a right to form their own fraternity? The question was as simple as that. If Jewish students were acceptable into the College, had not the College an official obligation to see that they received fair treatment outside, as well as inside the classroom? That second question was by no means simple, for it encountered a long tradition of student autonomy in the social recognition of student organizations.
On February 14, 1924, the Waterville Sentinel stated that Gamma Phi Epsilon had been granted formal recognition by the Colby faculty. The faculty at once received a vigorous protest from the Student Council. The faculty replied that the Sentinel was in error and that the matter stood just as it had stood for more than a year; namely, that while the faculty considered Gamma Phi Epsilon worthy to enjoy the same privileges as the other fraternities, it did not lie in the power of the faculty to grant campus recognition.
Gamma Phi Epsilon petitioned the Student Council for recognition year after year. It came within one vote of success in 1931, but lacked the necessary three- fourths. At last recognition was secured on November 21, 1932, when Carroll Pooler, 1933, Secretary of the Student Council, notified the faculty that "Gamma Phi Epsilon, by vote of the requisite three-fourths of the fraternities, is now en- titled to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the eight national chapters at Colby College, including the right to affiliate with a national fraternity." On December 14 the faculty voted that "Gamma Phi Epsilon is now granted formal recognition and the right to petition for a charter from an approved national fraternity."
Meanwhile the national Jewish fraternity Tau Delta Phi had taken notice of the local group at Colby. That fraternity presented a superior appeal to the col- lege offices as well as to the boys of Gamma Phi Epsilon, because Tau Delta Phi
470
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
had no discrimination against non-Jewish members. In fact it made it a policy to encourage its chapters to accept persons of all races and creeds solely on indi- vidual merit. The Dean of Men, who since the creation of that office in 1929 had been a vigorous supporter of the group's claim to recognition, urged affiliation with Tau Delta Phi. That affiliation was accomplished by the installation of the Colby chapter on February 11, 1933. From that day the fraternity held equal status with the others. It frequently captured the scholarship cup, secured its share of editor- ship and other offices, and held its own in athletics. It made a point of special pride to show no discrimination because of race, color, or religion.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.