What if...?
It has been said that choices are the hinges of destiny. P.E.O.’s course over the past 142 years has been influenced by three major decisions and manysmaller ones. The Sisterhood’s destiny has been shaped by the decision to become a community organization, the establishment of the Educational Loan Fund and the acceptance of the stewardship of Cottey College.
P.E.O. was founded at Iowa Wesleyan College on January 21, 1869, less than a month after another women’s organization, I.C. Sorosis, appeared on campus. Legend has it that some of the P.E.O. Founders had been asked to become I.C.s, but they declined because their friends were not included.
I.C. Sorosis was founded on April 28, 1867, at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, 58 miles from Mount Pleasant across the Mississippi River. Founded on the men’s fraternity model, Pi Beta Phi was the organization’s Greek motto; in 1888, it became its official name. I.C.’s third chapter was at the Mount Pleasant Female Seminary where the second P.E.O. chapter was formed. The antagonism between the chapters became so great that Mr. Belden, the administrator, took each group’s pins, the P.E.O. stars and the I.C. arrows, and put them in a bank vault until the relationship improved.
For the first years, P.E.O. members were mainly college women. However, because they enjoyed the organization, P.E.O.s remained active after graduation.
Community chapters followed, some started by women who were initiated while in college. The organization might have remained small had those early P.E.O.s not been so generous as to share membership with women who were not students.
Establishing chapters was a simple process. Any P.E.O. could organize a chapter with the approval of Chapter A, which would provide a handwritten constitution and bylaws in a small notebook. At the 1888 convention there was discussion about changing P.E.O. to a Greek letter society, and the idea was referred to a committee. There is no further information about the committee or its recommendations.
The number of chapters grew and the need for greater organizational controls became evident. The publication of The P.E.O. Record was authorized in 1888. Luckily, it won out over the cookbook idea that was presented at the prior year’s convention. The P.E.O. Record helped inform the membership about the organization and created a sense of community within the Sisterhood. In 1892, the name of the highest administrative body was changed to “Supreme Grand Chapter.” State Grand Chapters were also established. In 1893, to increase public awareness of the Sisterhood, P.E.O. Days at Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition were held.
Conventions became a time for participating in the governance of the Sisterhood and they provided a venue for sharing P.E.O. experiences. They had been small affairs held in members’ homes. In 1899, for the first time, convention was held in a hotel, Chicago’s Palmer House. There were more than 68 delegates. It was the first Supreme Convention held east of the Mississippi River and in a state without a State Grand Chapter.
On June 7, 1902, Chapter S, formerly Chapter A and then Chapter AJ, the P.E.O. chapter at Iowa Wesleyan, disbanded. It became the Beta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta, a women’s fraternity founded in 1893 at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. This was the break between P.E.O.’s beginning as a collegiate organization and its future as a community philanthropic and educational Sisterhood.
Education—“self-improvement”— has always been a part of P.E.O., in the projects and altruistic programs carried out by individual chapters and members. Widespread projects took longer to catch on. At the 1887 convention, it was moved and adopted that all chapters procure funds to establish an industrial home for girls. In 1888, it was determined that little had been done by the chapters to advance the idea of the home for girls and the plan was dropped.
In 1903, Chapter O, Saint Louis, Missouri, proposed a plan for a P.E.O. Day at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the Saint Louis World’s Fair. Two hundred dollars was authorized by convention to fund it and chapters were asked to send additional contributions. As had been the plan in Chicago a decade earlier, the goal of the event was to help P.E.O. become better known to the world. Utilizing the Day at the Fair’s surplus of $658.88 was on the agenda of the 1907 convention. Three projects, including scholarships for worthy women, were presented. An amendment to change “scholarships” to “loans” passed, as did the subsequent motion. With gifts given at the convention, the total in the Educational Loan Fund reached $2,000. From 1909 to 1916, the fund grew from $5,000 to $40,000. By the Golden Jubilee convention in 1919, every state had contributed funding and the total was $111,800.
Had P.E.O.s decided to fund one of the other projects proposed at the 1907 convention, a P.E.O. Home in Colorado or the establishment of a printing plant, the more than 42,500 women who have received $130,000,000 in assistance from the Educational Loan Fund would have had to find other forms of financial aid or do without. Moreover, this initial foray into education gave P.E.O. a focus that would grow over time. The International Peace Scholarship started in 1949 after World War II to fund scholarships for international women to study in the United States and Canada. Since 1973, the Program for Continuing Education has helped women restart their educational pursuits. In 1991, the P.E.O. Scholar Awards project began. The newest project, the STAR Scholarship, is for high school seniors. The initial vote to create the Educational Loan Fund has resulted in 85,446 women receiving $210,650,000 in assistance through P.E.O. projects.
Cottey College, no doubt, would be a different place without P.E.O.’s affiliation. What would Virginia Alice Cottey Stockard have done with the college she started if P.E.O. hadn’t been around? Or what would have happened if the P.E.O. Sisterhood had not accepted the gift of Cottey College in 1927? Many small colleges did not make it through the Great Depression. Would Cottey College have fallen by the wayside without P.E.O.’s ownership and involvement? A recommendation to sever P.E.O.’s connection with Cottey College was slated to be presented at the 1933 Kansas City convention. A trip to Cottey College
for the convention body resulted in the motion to discontinue support beingsoundly defeated.
With that acceptance of Mrs. Stockard’s gift, Cottey College became the nation’s only nonsectarian college owned and supported by women, for women. More than 8,900 women have graduated from Cottey College.
If P.E.O. had remained a society of college women, most of us would not be reading this magazine. Had P.E.O. started a printing business with the Day at the
Fair proceeds, P.E.O. might never have ventured into education and Mrs. Stockard might never have considered giving her college to the Sisterhood. “We are in a transition period today, the pioneer environments behind us, the coming women yet to arrive and the women of today are trying to bridge the chasm,” said Founder Alice Babb 116 years ago. Though the times have changed aren’t the sentiments as valid today as they were when she said those words in 1895? 
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P.E.O.s rivalry with I.C. Sorosis (Pi Beta Phi):
P.E.O.'s founding on January 21, 1869, closely followed the appearance of the second chapter of I.C. Sorosis (today known by its Greek motto, Pi Beta Phi) on the Iowa Wesleyan College campus. Had P.E.O. followed I.C.'s model of expansion to college campuses, it likely would have become a founding member of the National Panhellenic Conference, the umbrella organization of 26 women's fraternities. Pi Beta Phi has the first place in the rotation of the chairmanship. The founding seven members of the National Panhellenic Conference in rotation order are Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Phi, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta and Delta Delta Delta. Had P.E.O. continued as a collegiate organization, it quite likely might have had the second place in the rotation.
P.E.O. and I.C. Sorosis competed for members at Iowa Wesleyan and at the Mount Pleasant Female Seminary where they both had chapters. According to an account in the Story of P.E.O., "When the P.E.O.s had heard that the I.C.s were going to march into chapel wearing blue calico dresses all made after the same fashion, they met that afternoon and worked like mad making aprons of white calico with a black star. The aprons had a ruffle all around them and were made with a bib, fashioned on the left shoulder with the shining P.E.O. star. The I.C.s, so the P.E.O.s discovered, were to meet in one of the literary halls and the P.E.O.s went along before chapel time and crowded into a little closet-like room used by the janitor very near the chapel door. At the last stroke of the bell, just as the I.C.s started out of the door farther down the hall, the P.E.O.s stepped out in front of them and proudly appeared first in chapel."
The antagonism between the chapters at Mount Pleasant Seminary became so great that Mr. Belden, the administrator, took the badges of each group and put them in a bank vault until the relationship improved. In 1890, in a chart in "The Arrow," four Pi Beta Phi chapters listed P.E.O. as their main rival.
The intense rivalry between the two organizations continued for at least 20 years and was greatest in Iowa. By 1900, the rivalry had mostly dissipated. Anne Stuart, a University of Nebraska Pi Beta Phi, served as Grand Treasurer from 1912-25. Her 1939 obituary noted that she was also a member of P.E.O.
Elizabeth Davenport Garrels, (Chapter NZ, Mt. Pleasant, IA), President of International Chapter, in addition to being a past president of Chapter Original A, was initiated into the Iowa Alpha Chapter of Pi Beta Phi when she was a collegian at Iowa Wesleyan College. Today, there are many Pi Beta Phis who also belong to P.E.O.
Educational Loan Fund:
Three projects were presented to the 1907 Convention as a means of using the surplus from the Day at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. The decision to start an Educational Loan Fund won out over several other proposals including a P.E.O. Home in Colorado and a plan for establishing a printing plant. A Nebraska P.E.O. made the suggestion to fund scholarships. Discussion followed and the idea of loaning funds was mentioned. When the question was called the following morning, it was moved that the funds be used for a P.E.O. home. The Nebraska P.E.O. moved to amend the motion by substituting the word "scholarship" for "home." Although it changed the intent of the motion, it was ruled in order. Another Nebraska P.E.O. moved to amend the amendment. The motion that finally carried created the Educational Fund. P.E.O.'s future as a Philanthropic, Educational Organization evolved out of this decision.
Cottey College:
Virginia Alice Cottey Stockard’s presentation of her college in 1927 was not greeted with general acclaim. In the early 1930s, there was some opposition to the gift. A recommendation to sever all connections between P.E.O. and Cottey College was slated to be presented at the 1933 convention. The entire convention body took a special trip to Cottey College en masse. This seems to have made the difference and the motion was defeated. Cottey College remains an integral part of P.E.O.’s educational mission!
P.E.O. Record:
In 1888, convention voted to establish a paper, or magazine, and to take the necessary amount from the treasury. An idea put forth at the previous year’s convention, the creation of a cookbook, was tabled.
The 1880s were a time when many women’s groups, including P.E.O.’s early rival at Iowa Wesleyan, Pi Beta Phi, established magazines to keep membership apprised of activities.
The first issue was published in January 1889. It was 16 pages with inspirational pieces and historical information as well as household hints. Throughout the years The P.E.O. Record has continued to evolve and been a way to share news within P.E.O.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
History of P.E.O. in Illinois, 1953
History of P.E.O. Sisterhood (The White History), Egberts, Fidler and Chambers, Davenport, Iowa, 1903
Out of the Heart, A Century of P.E.O.-1869-1969, Clapp, Stella, 1968
The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi, History Number. 1867-1936, Wright, Agnes Spring, 1936
The Story of P.E.O., Reeves, Winona Evans, Vol I, Second Edition, 1869-1923; Vol II, 1924-1936
