ANOTHER EARLY FEMINIST
December 16, 1952
Mr. and Mrs. Garnett Reed Chenault
Mt. Sterling, Kentucky
My dear Mr. and Mrs. Chenault, I have just received your very kind and thoughtful letter, together with the newspaper enclosure concerning the Tipton family in Montgomery County, Kentucky. You are a most considerate couple. On behalf of my sister, Mrs. Margaret D. Bridges, now about 90 and almost blind and quite deaf, and myself, I thank you. Mrs. Bridges, in the early 1880s, and as a sprightly young Miss, visited her cousin, Amanda Black Tipton and husband Burwell . . .
You possibly might be interested to know that Burwell's daughter Bettie (who married a Lindsay and after marriage lived in Winchester, Ky.), through a combination of ability, aggressiveness, chance and fate, came to be a famous woman nationally. Asbury College (now DePauw University) a staid Methodist school here in Greencastle, opened its doors to women students in 1870—an unheard-of thing. And here came Bettie, bringing along her charming southern ways. Females were frowned- on by the young college men as interlopers and undesirables, and were subjected to some indignities. Bettie et. als. persisted. Bettie, along with three other young women students, founded the first Greek Letter Sorority in the world, Kappa Alpha Theta. That brought another blast. Today Kappa Alpha Theta is the oldest, largest and wealthiest of the 35 to 50 others that have followed. Its assets run into the millions. And Bettie's name is known throughout the civilized world wherever a "Theta," as they call themselves, lives, because all Thetas are required to memorize the names of the founders as a prerequisite to initiation. I know. My five daughters are Thetas.
Another thing about the fabulous Bettie. When it came time to graduate, Bettie and some young man were nip and tuck as to leadership in scholarship, but Bettie's grades were a shade higher. What to do about Class Valedictorian? The College authorities approached the formidable Bettie on behalf of the young man. He was to become a famous Methodist minister and would go out into the world preaching the Gospel. It would add greatly to his prestige to go out as having been Valedictorian of his graduating class. As for her, she would probably marry, and by inference, thereby be relegated to the kitchen, nursery—and oblivion.
Our indomitable Bettie . . . told the good, kindly, God-fearing faculty members that her father had sent her all the way from Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, to Greencastle for her education and at considerable expense, and with much trepidation and prayerful contemplation. She also told them in no uncertain words that if she were entitled to be Valedictorian, then she wanted to be Valedictorian, and that was that.
She got it, and the theretofore man-dominated Methodist Asbury got an unexpected social shock to its sturdy limestone foundations.
Rumor hath it even that one of the old buildings took a decided list to the south and had to be shored-up. More shoring was to be had as the years passed . . . . Cordially,