Kappa Kappa Gamma - History

History

The idea of Kappa Kappa Gamma is said to have been conceived in a conversation between two college women, Mary Louise Bennett and Hannah Jeannette Boyd, on a wooden bridge over a stream on the Monmouth College campus in the late 1860s. Though the coeducational college was considered progressive at the time, the women were dissatisfied with the fact that while men enjoyed membership in fraternities, women had no such equivalent organizations for companionship, support and advancement and were instead limited to literary societies (such as the Monmouth College Literary Society that became Pi Beta Phi women's fraternity in 1867). Bennett and Boyd began to seek "the choicest spirits among the girls, not only for literary work, but also for social development", beginning with their friend Mary Moore Stewart. Stewart, Boyd, and Bennett met around 1869 in the Amateurs des Belles Lettres Hall, a literary society of which the women were active members when they first decided to form a new society. Soon after, they recruited three additional women including Anna Elizabeth Willits, Martha Louisa Stevenson, and Susan Burley Walker, to join in founding the fraternity.

The six founders met at the home of Anna Willits to lay the groundwork for the formation of the first chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, later known as the Alpha Chapter. It was there that they chose the golden key as their badge and prepared to make their official debut by ordering their badges from Lou Bennett's family jeweler. A formal charter was also drawn up by Minnie Stewart's father, who was an attorney in the state of Illinois.

The six founders declared their intention to organize as a women's fraternity when on October 13, 1870, they marched into the most public venue on campus, the chapel, wearing their golden key badges in their hair. This day is nationally recognized by the fraternity as "Founders Day".

In 1871, the young fraternity expanded by chartering their Beta Chapter at nearby St. Mary's Seminary. The next year, the fraternity expanded again to Gamma Chapter at Smithson College and Delta Chapter at Indiana University. Though the Beta and Gamma chapters failed to survive more than a few years, the Delta chapter became the fraternity's oldest continuously active chapter (Alpha was closed in 1874 but later re-established) and contributed a great deal to the organization of the fraternity in its early years.

Since 1870, Kappa has continued to expand and has chartered 160 chapters, 138 of which are active today.