Learn about the history of Sigma Nu The Founders

The story of Sigma Nu began during the period following the Civil War, when a Confederate veteran of that war from Arkansas enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. That cadet was James Frank Hopkins, and it is to him and two of his friends that Sigma Nu owes its existence. When Hopkins enrolled at VMI, the South was in a state of turmoil and was just beginning to recover from the defeat it had suffered. Virginia Military Institute cadets also suffered, not only because of war, but because of the system of physical harassment imposed upon lower classmen by their fellow students in the upper classes.

Hopkins had learned military subservience during the war and was willing to accept a reasonable amount of harassment which was intended to induce discipline. However, Hopkins was unwilling to accept the amount of hazing then being allowed at VMI.

Hopkins was soon joined by two upper-class friends who were also unhappy with the hazing situation. They were Greenfield Quarles, also from Arkansas but a Kentuckian by birth, and James Mcilvaine Riley from St. Louis, Missouri. These three men began a movement to abolish the hazing system completely. Their efforts climaxed on an October night in 1868, when the three met at a limestone outcropping near the VMI parade grounds. Hopkins, Quarles and Riley clasped hands on the Bible and made their solemn pledges as Brothers in a new society-The Legion of Honor.

The vows taken by these Founders bound them together to oppose hazing at VMI and to cherish an Honor ideal which encouraged the application of the principle of Honor in all their relationships. That the Founders should adopt Honor as a guiding principle was a natural move since a rigid code of Honor was a tradition of the VMI Corps of Cadets. The Honor system at VMI required each cadet to conform to the duty imposed by his conscience and suggested that each act be governed by the ideal of Honor.

Sigma Nu Announced

Sigma Nu Fraternity began in October, 1868. However, its existence was kept secret until January 1, 1869, which is the accepted date of the founding of the Fraternity. Although January 1, 1869, is accepted as the Fraternity's birth date, Sigma Nu had its spiritual birth in 1866 when Frank Hopkins first rebelled against hazing at VMI. The Founders did not begin Sigma Nu with any feeling of animosity; rather they were prompted by the impulses of sympathy and affection which underlie abiding peace and contentment.

The Legion of Honor in its first year assumed the outward aspects of a college Greek letter organization. The organization secretly kept its original name but was recognized publicly as Sigma Nu Fraternity. The new Fraternity needed an identifying symbol, and Founder Hopkins designed a badge for the members to wear on their uniforms. That badge was patterned after the Cross of the French Legion of Honor and was first introduced in the spring of 1869. Keeping with the Founder's decree, that badge has remained unchanged, except size and the raised center, since it was introduced.

When the first slate of officers was chosen, Riley was elected Commander, and Hopkins was elected Lieutenant Commander. By the 1869 commencement the group had grown to fifty-one members.

Sigma Nu Expands

Expansion began for Sigma Nu in 1870 when the Mother Chapter at VMI, then known as Chapter 1, approved the establishment of a chapter at the University of Virginia. A later permanent numbering system established a Greek letter designation for chapters and Chapter 1 became Alpha and the University of Virginia chapter became Beta Chapter.

Sigma Nu established a chapter at North Georgia Agricultural College in 1881. One of the men instrumental in the chartering of the North Georgia Chapter was John Alexander Howard. He was blessed with rare intellect and considerable talent for writing. That talent led him naturally to newspaper work. Howard read widely and in his reading he discovered Baird's Manual of American College Fratemities. He read that book until he was familiar with all national fraternities. His study of other fraternities caused him to examine shortcomings of his own fraternity. At this time Sigma Nu was still using the Roman numeral designation for chapters. Howard felt that the Fraternity should adopt a Greek letter chapter designation according to the date of founding of the chapter. Thus his own chapter at North Georgia became Kappa. The main contribution of Howard was the founding of The Delta. He selected "Delta" to symbolize the three chapters of the Fraternity existing at that time. The first edition of The Delta was published in April 1883 and contained sixteen pages.

First Grand Chapter

The year following the publication of The Delta saw another important milestone for Sigma Nu. That event was the first convention which occurred at Nashville, Tennessee, July 9-10, 1884. The person responsible for the first convention was Isaac P. Robinson (Lambda, Washington and Lee). Robinson felt that a meeting of alumni and chapter representatives was imperative because of a need to update the constitution, to revise some procedures and to coordinate efforts. The Sigma Nu convention later became known as Grand Chapter, which, now held every two years, serves as the legislative body of the General Fraternity.

Sigma Nu had another event happen in 1884 which had a major impact upon the Fraternity. That event was the establishment of Nu Chapter at the University of Kansas. During the first fifteen years of its existence, Sigma Nu was primarily a Southern fraternity, and the decision to establish Nu Chapter was to be the first step in a radical expansion program. Nu Chapter was to open the West and North for Sigma Nu.

Two charter initiates at Nu were to be very influential in Sigma Nu in later years. These two men were Perlee Rawson Bennett and Grant Woodbury Harrington. Bennett was to serve the Fraternity for a long period as Grand Recorder and in 1890 was elected Regent. He was later to preside over the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Tenth Grand Chapters. Harrington was to become editor of The Delta and Grand Recorder. For eight years (1886-1894) he had almost total responsibility for the administration of the Fraternity. Other early members of Nu Chapter who were to be influential in Fraternity affairs were brothers. William H. Sears, Clarence H. Sears and Walter Sears were all initiated into Nu Chapter. Their brother Lorin Beecher Sears attended Ohio State University, where there was no chapter of Sigma Nu at the time. Walter was so interested in having his brother, Lorin, initiated into the Fraternity that he entered Ohio State University, where he founded Beta Nu. Lorin Sears became the first initiate of Beta Nu Chapter. Walter Sears devoted much of his lifetime to Sigma Nu, but his name will best be remembered for his beautiful prose work, "The Creed of Sigma Nu."

The Move West

Leland Stanford University opened in 1891. Among its first students was Carl Lane Clemans, who had founded Chi Chapter at Cornell College in lowa. Clemans was determined to open a chapter on the West Coast, and he recruited enough men to charter Beta Chi Chapter at Stanford in November, 1891. Beta Chi's fame soon spread to Berkeley, and Clemans went there to help organize Beta Psi in February, 1892.

Sigma Nu opened the Northwest to Greek letter organizations when Gamma Chi was chartered at the University of Washington in 1895. For almost four years Sigma Nu was the only college fraternity in the Northwest.

Beta lota at Mount Union was chartered by Walter Sears in 1892. Three years later Beta lota initiated Albert Hughes Wilson, to whom Sigma Nu owes a great debt. "Bert" Wilson served as Regent, but his most noteworthy achievement was in expansion. Wilson established more chapters than any other member of the Fraternity, and he is generally credited with helping develop Sigma Nu into a thoroughly representative organization.

Headquarters Established

Having active chapters in each section of the country, Sigma Nu was now in every sense a national fraternity. Expansion proceeded at an orderly rate, and by 1915 there was felt the need of centrally located administrative offices with full time officers. Heretofore, the various Sigma Nu officers maintained their files and records at their own homes or places of business. Fire had once destroyed many of the records, and there was a lack of coordination.

Following the Denver Grand Chapter, the High Council approved the establishment of the central administrative system first proposed by Regent Francis V. Keesling (Beta Chi, Stanford). The plan, adapted by Walter J. Sears, converted the High Council into a board of directors elected by the Grand Chapter; all the duties of an executive and administrative character previously exercised by members of the High Council and committees were lodged in a single official-the General Secretary (now Executive Director)- appointed by the High Council and subordinate to its direction.

Indianapolis was selected as the location of the Fraternity's headquarters and the General Offices were opened there in the Lemcke Annex building on November 1, 1915. Bixby Willis (Lambda, Washington and Lee), a past Grand Treasurer of Sigma Nu, was employed as the first General Secretary.

Indianapolis served as the Fraternity's headquarters for the next 42 years during which 55 new chapters were added to the roster of the Legion of Honor. During this period the system of uniform accounting for chapters was instituted and the Permanent Endowment Fund was created.

Death of Founders

Founder James Riley, who had served also as the Fraternity's first Regent, an office he held for ten years (1869-79), died on May 6, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri. Members of the Fraternity carried his remains for burial to a plot purchased in Bellefontaine Cemetery by the St. Louis Alumni Chapter in fraternal affection for the Founder.

The life of James Frank Hopkins ended on December 15, 1913, and he was laid to rest in the village cemetery at Mablevale, Arkansas, beside his cadet sweetheart and devoted wife, Jennie Barclay Hopkins. In 1920 an impressive memorial was dedicated at the grave site. Greenfield Quarles, the only Founder then living, offered a tribute to Alpha Number One:

"The love of our Brother for his fellowman was only excelled by his love of his God. His example has instilled into the hearts of us all the principles which guide us now, and these principles will go down to future generations for all time. His life has been an inspiration to all youth. All that was mortal of Brother Hopkins lies buried here; but his immortal spirit will live forever."

Six months later, January 14, 1921, the last of the three Founders was taken from living contact with the Fraternity. Judge Greenfield Quarles died at his home in Helena, Arkansas. He had lived a life of noble service and set an example of Christian living.

Return to Lexington

Even before Sigma Nu's first central office was organized in Indianapolis, some dreamed of the day when the Fraternity would have an appropriate shrine at Sigma Nu's birthplace, but it took nearly four decades before the first step was taken. That step was the appointment of a Headquarters Committee in 1954. It compared rental with ownership and ultimately recommended ownership in a college town where a Sigma Nu chapter thrived. Inevitably Sigma Nu history and tradition pointed to Lexington.

Regent James W. Bradley (Epsilon Epsilon, Oklahoma State) and his High Council took the historic step in 1957, purchasing without mortgage or lien a singularly appropriate property, a large home ideally suited for conversion and development purposes, and conveniently located on an elevated eight-acre track looking toward V.M.I. and Washington and Lee, with the Blue Ridge as a backdrop. Milton L. Grigg, an outstanding Virginia architect and participant in the Williamsburg Restoration, was hired to restore the building. The headquarters building was occupied in 1958 and officially dedicated June 9, 1960.

Sigma Nu Centennial

On January 1, 1969, Sigma Nu reached its one-hundred-year milestone. In the year that followed, it marked the event with a series of Centennial dinners at 36 locations throughout the country and with pilgrimages to the gravesites of three Founders and the first editor of The Delta. Then on Sunday, June 15, a Centennial Convocation was held in Lexington. Two beautiful new wings of the headquarters building were dedicated, one housing a Sigma Nu museum and the other the Fraternity's honor library, later to be named in tribute to former Executive Secretary Richard R. Fletcher.

Sigma Nu in its hundredth year had come a long way from its founding. At the century mark it had issued 164 charters of which 143 chapters were alive and flourishing. Of the nine other truly national fraternities older than Sigma Nu, only three had more initiates. It owned 110 chapter houses providing living accommodations for more than 3,500 students. All this it had done solely through the appeal of its principles-without false claims or specious promises, without merger, without honorary members. Every chapter had earned its own way by applying integrity in both purpose and method.

Today, into the Fraternity's second century, Sigma Nu continues its dramatic growth. The number of initiates well exceeds 130,000. Many of the Fraternity's chapters have initiated more than a thousand members each. Indeed, Sigma Nu may indeed be on the threshold of the era of its great success.

For more than 100 years the Fraternity's chapters have shaped the man of integrity. Its challenge for the future is to bend its efforts and energies anew to the fuller realization of the great mission set by our Founders.