History

Beta’s Founding:
At nine o’clock on the evening of the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 1839, eight earnest young men, all students at Miami University, held the first meeting of Beta Theta Pi in the Hall of the Union Literary Society, an upper room in the old college building known as “Old Main”. The eight founders in the order in which their names appear in the minutes were:

John Reily Knox, 1839
Samuel Taylor Marshall, 1840
David Linton, 1839
James George Smith, 1840
Charles Henry Hardin, 1841
John Holt Duncan, 1840
Michael Clarkson Ryan, 1839
Thomas Boston Gordon, 1840
“of ever honored memory”

*The Founder’s Paragraph (above) is a summary of the first regular meeting of Beta Theta Pi. To better understand this beginning some background of life in 1839 is necessary.

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In 1839, when Beta Theta Pi was founded at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, the college fraternity world consisted of only 19 chapters of five secret Greek-letter fraternities, located on 10 college campuses in five states. In addition, the Mystic Seven Society had been organized in 1837 at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., and Delta Upsilon had been founded at Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., as a protest against secret societies.College life at Miami University in 1839 was very different from today. There were only 135 students, all male, and six professors. Tuition would be quite apealing to us at only $24 per year. The academic year lasted from early October until early August with breaks for Christmas and Easter. There were only three main buildings, Elliott and Stoddard halls serving as dormitories and one main academic building known as Old Main.

Students at Miami often had made a large commitment going off to college, perhaps leaving a farm short handed back home. Academics were a pursuit not to be taken lightly. This is demonstrated by the most important extracurricular activities being membership in the Erodelphian and Union Literary Societies. Each had accrued substantial libraries since their formation in 1825. Students gathered on Friday afternoons in the society halls on the third floor of Old Main where they read and criticized essays, debated, and developed skills in extemporaneous speaking. Each sought to provide its members mutual improvement, the cultivation of fellowship, and the promotion of standards of conduct. Most students were members of these societies. Knox was elected President of the Union Lit in June 1839 while Linton served as Treasurer of the Erodelphians for a year.

For some of the students something was missing. During the winter and spring of 1839 our Founders began planning something different. It was in this time that Knox and Marshall, rooming in the west wing of Old Main with Harding and Smith, jointly conceived and worked together to create Beta Theta Pi. On August 8th eight young men crept up to the third floor of Old Main and entered the Hall of the Union Literary Society of which Knox was the president. Five of them were only 19 and four of them just barely so. Knox, Linton, and Ryan were about to graduate so Duncan was elected the first president and Smith as Secretary.

When the five remaining Founders returned to Miami in October they began to recruit new brothers. At their first meeting they elected Smith’s cousin, Henry Hunter Johnson, and in February added John Whitney, Alexander Paddack, and A. W. Hamilton, two of whom would soon play important roles in founding the Cincinnati Chapter. And so the Founding of Beta Theta Pi was complete.

Beta’s Growth:
The Constitution provided that “other branches of the association may be established at such places as may be thought suitable and prudent.” On April 4th, 1840, Paddack, Gordon, and Hamilton initiated four men at Cincinnati establishing the second chapter of our Fraternity. Cincinnati promptly took up the expansion work of the fraternity adding chapters at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, and Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

1850-1900: The Civil War caused the greatest crisis in the history of Beta Theta Pi. The war threatened the life of more than half of the 24 chapters in existence in 1860, with the functioning chapters being reduced by 1864 to those at Miami, Western Reserve, Jefferson, Washington, Indiana Asbury (DePauw), Ohio Wesleyan, Wabash, Hanover, Ohio, Knox and Indiana. The war threatened the fundamental principle of brotherhood.

The fraternity continued to expand steadily until in 1879 a union with Alpha Sigma Chi was approved adding five new chapters at Rutgers, Cornell, Stevens, St. Lawrence and Maine. This provided the fraternity with an important presence in the East that it had previously lacked. By 1889 another union was consumated with The Mystic Seven Society adding chapters at Davidson, North Carolina, and Virginia.

1900-1950: By the turn of the century, two important features of Beta Theta Pi had become apparent. The first “Beta character” had already manifested itself in stories such as that of John Holt Duncan and the men of the Michigan chapter who refused to forsake their membership and their badge.

In 1906 a significant milestone in Beta history occurred with the chartering of its first chapter in Canada. The Theta Zeta chapter at the University of Toronto was established making Beta Theta Pi an international fraternity.

1950-present: With the establishment of the Administrative Office and appointment of an administrative secretary in 1949, the stage was set for spectacular growth and a solid future for Beta Theta Pi and her fraternal colleagues in the years ahead. Almost immediately, however, the Korean War took a tragic toll on the chapters, followed by the emergence of more independent collegians, quick to express themselves over the Vietnam War, often joined by their own faculties. Nonetheless, the Beta spirit endured, grew stronger and, by the end of the 20th century, a renewed commitment to the Beta principles the “Men of Principle initiative” was embraced by Beta Theta Pi, born of necessity and nurtured by yet another evolution of young men who yearn for excellence and thrive on brotherhood.