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History of Kappa-Omega Zeta |
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History of Kappa-Omega Zeta |
Unknown to most Georgetonians is fact that the
Phi Delta Theta Fraternity was the first national general fraternity to charter
a chapter at Georgetown College. The ignorance is forgivable, considering the chapter's
short life span, few initiates, its closing thirty years before the first
successful fraternity would be chartered, and the fact that the chapter has not operated
in over 130 years. Despite its brief life, the chapter did count several notable
Georgetown alumni as initiates, including a college president (not Georgetown) and
a president of the Georgetown's Board of Trustees.
No mention of the fraternity has been found in the scant records of the college from the time of the chapter's existence. All information in this article was provided by Laurie Rosenberger, assistant to the Executive Vice President at FDQ's national headquarters, along with some data taken from Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities and Sororities, where this editor first discovered the chapter's existence.
[photo: FDQ Badge, taken from the internet]
FDQ was founded at Miami University in Ohio in the year 1848, and is one of the Miami Triad, a group of three national fraternities founded at that institution. The Miami Triad is credited with spreading the concept of the national fraternity nation-wide with their agressive expansion policies in the early days of fraternities before the Civil War.
FDQ had a couple of policies in effect in the mid-1800's which
were common at the time but are out-of-use today. First, chapters were organized at the
state level, with the Alpha (first) chapter in a state (and/or the state convention)
having the authority to charter new chapters within the state, according to the
national constitution but without approval of the national office. Secondly, more
than one chapter could be chartered at a single college if the chapter grew too
large for a "close brotherly bond," usually about twenty members. Both policies
were abandoned by most fraternities and sororities by 1900.
Even in the early days, chapters regularly reported to the national office, and much correspondence was published in the fraternity's national magazine, called The Scroll of FDQ. It is from issues of these periodicals, and history books written by early members, that information on chapters of the 1800's, including Georgetown's, can be found.
[photo: Early 1920's engraving of the FDQ Coat-of-Arms, taken from the internet]
The first (Alpha) FDQ chapter in Kentucky was established at Centre College in the early 1850's. It was endowed with the authority to establish new chapters in the Commonwealth as stated earlier. The Beta (second) chapter was founded at the Kentucky Military Institute which is no longer in operation. An attempt to establish another chapter at Centre, intended to be called Gamma, failed. Thus when the third chapter was chartered, at Georgetown College, it received the designation of Kentucky-Gamma.
Later Kentucky-Delta would be established at Central College in Danville, which eventually merged with Centre. By then FDQ had adopted a policy of one chapter per college, so the two chapters merged into Kentucky Alpha-Delta which still operates today. In later years, FDQ would charter chapters at UK, Kentucky Wesleyan, WKU and EKU.
On January 20, 1857, J.F. Cook, a student at Georgetown College, was elected to membership in FDQ by the Centre chapter. He and four other Georgetown students were then issued a charter as the Kentucky-Gamma chapter. The fraternity apparently faced immediate oppostion from the faculty, as their charter was withdrawn by April of the same year. The faculty opposition was said to have arisen from the secretive characteristics of the organization. Georgetown had allowed fraternal, Greek-letter oganizations like TQK, but were unimpressed with secret ceremonies, mottos, handshakes, etc. of a fraternity.
The most noteworthy of the five brothers was probably Joshua Flood Cook, the principle organizer, who went on to become a minister, chaplain in the Confederate army, graduate of Baylor Law School, and the president of two small liberal-arts colleges in Missouri and one in Kentucky.
[Photo: Joshua Flood Cook, obviously past his college years. Taken from family website]
In March 1875, the Alpha chapter at Centre re-issued the charter of Gamma at Georgetown. According to a letter sent to the national office from Alpha, the Gamma chapter was re-established chiefly by Georgetown students Abner and John Rogers, overcoming stiff campus opposition. The Georgetown Phi Delts ensured their brothers at Centre that anti-fraternity opposition was dissipating at their college and that they had every hope for the success of the chapter.
Copies of three letters from the Georgetown chapter to the national office have been
preserved. The first, written in November 1875, reports the chapter has six active members
and had recently sent a delegate, Augereau Glenn, to the state FDQ
convention in Danville. A second letter dated March 1876 announced the one year
anniversary of the chapter and that it was doing well. The last, dated two months later
in May, probably written as an end-of-school-year report, stated the chapter had twelve
active members and great hopes for the future of the chapter at Georgetown.
The only other records FDQ headquarters has of the Georgetown chapter is the chapter roster (see below) listing seventeen brothers, five initiated in the 1850's and twelve in the 1870's. The 1959 edition of Baird's Manual lists the chapter's dates as 1855-1855, 1875-1876, and 1876-1876. Newer versions of Baird's misleadingly list the dates as 1857-1876. It seems then that the chapter's charter was revoked, re-issued, and revoked again in the fall of 1876, most likely once again due to faculty opposition.
Of the twelve 1870's initiates, two seem most notable, other than the Rogers brothers who were the principle founders. Louis Bristow went on to be a lawyer, engineer, surveyor and real estate speculator in Florida and the wild west, before returning to Kentucky in 1894 to serve as a judge in the Scott county court.
The most intriguing FDQ alumnus, especially in the context
of the development of fraternities at Georgetown, is G. H. Nunnelly.
Nunnelly became a farmer and merchant in Shelby county. He was elected to the
Georgetown Board of Trustees in 1909, eventually being elected president of the
Board. Most interestingly, Nunnelly was president of the Board at the time
the Board voted to ban fraternities on campus, 1921-25. At this point, I have
no evidence of Nunnelly's position on fraternities at Georgetown, but it would
be interesting to discover. The music building was named Nunnelly Hall in his
honor when built in the 1950's and is still in use today.
[photos: FDQ pledge pin; Nunnelly Music Building]
The following roster is a compilation of information on the seventeen initiates of the
chapter derived from FDQ records,
online Georgetown alumni records, and information found on the internet (Cook).
Georgetown students who did not graduate were never added to alumni records, probably
explaining the absence of some from Georgetown's alumni list.
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| Armstrong (1857) | Ferguson (1857) | Cook (older) |
| Name | Class | Grad | GC Alumni Notes |
| Charles D. Armstrong | 1857 | 1857 | A.B., author, lawyer; Jeffersonville, Indiana; died |
| John A. Chambliss | 1857 | ? | (no mention) |
| James H. Ferguson | 1857 | 1857 | A.B., Lieutenant Confederate Army; farmer; Scott County; died July 31, 1871 |
| Joshua F. Cook | 1858 | 1858 | GC records: A.B., A.M., 1861, LL.D., minister;
president LaGrange College, Webb City, Missouri, 1866-1912; born Shelby County 1837; died May 21, 1912 FDQ records: first accepted and principle organizer of the chapter Online family records: ordained 1858 at Campbellsburg (ville?); Confederate chaplain at Summit, MS; LL.D. from Baylor 1868; president of LaGrange College (MO) 1866-1896; president of Webb City College (MO) 1896-1900; published book Old Kentucky 1908; died 1912. [photo and data from here.] |
| Henry Ray | 1858 | 1858 | A.B., pastor; Maysville, 1858-1860; Bowling Green, 1866-1866; born Mississippi; died May, 1866 |
| Name | Class | Grad | GC Alumni Notes |
| Amos Stout | 1875 | 1875 | A.B., Th.B., Southern Baptist Theology Seminary, 1894; minster and teacher; professor Mathematics Garrard College, 1889-1892; address, Georgetown |
| Louis L. Bristow | 1876 | 1876 | B.S., LL.B., University Virginia 1879; lawyer, Cincinnati, 1880-1882; civil engineer and R.R. surveyor, Florida, 1883-1886; real estate speculation in Florida and the West, 1887-1893; city attorney, Georgetown; judge Scott County Court, 1894-1910; supervisor of census for 7th Congressional District, Kentucky, 1916-1911; mining superintendent, 1912-; address, Georgetown |
| George W. Cleveland | 1876 | ? | (no mention) |
| Gilmore H. Nunnelly | 1876 | 1876 | B.S.; farmer, 1877-1879; merchant, 1879-; trustee Georgetown College, 1909-; address Georgetown [President of the GC Board of Trustees when fraternities banned, 1921-25; Nunnelly Music Building is still in use at GC] |
| Lee P. Viley | 1876 | 1876 | A.B.; real estate, Kansas City, Missouri; died November 14. 1912 |
| Eugene S. Carruthers | 1877 | 1877 | B.S.; farmer, Shelby County 1877-1879; clerk wholesale dry goods house, Kansas City, Missouri, 1879-1885; clothing merchant, 1885-; address Street Anthony, Idaho |
| Abner O. Rogers | 1877 | 1875 | A.B., A.M., 1876; teacher Latin and French Daughters College, Harrodsburg; 1880-1881; principal Male Academy, Stanford, 1881-1887; teacher Latin and Mathematics, Liberty College, Glasgow, 1893-1895; Superintendent, Bryan Normal Institute, Pembroke, Georgia, 1914-; address, Lexington [mentioned as a principle organizer of the re-chartered chapter] |
| John O. Rogers | 1878 | 1878 | A.B., farmer; address, Versailles [mentioned as a principle organizer of the re-chartered chapter] |
| German B. Stout | 1878 | 1877 | A.B.; farmer Woodford County; member Legislature, 1900; died April, 1900 |
| Lawrence S. Caldwell | 1879 | ? | (no mention) |
| Augereau Glenn | 1879 | ? | [delegate to FDQ state convention] (no mention in GC records) |
| George S. Scearce | 1879 | 1879 | A.B., teacher and minister; principal Academy, Shelbyville; pastor, Versailles; died |
