Beta Theta Pi Fraternity History
Beta Theta Pi (ΒΘΠ) is an international college social fraternity founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where it is part of the Miami Triad. Beta, as our chapter is nicknamed, was the first college fraternity to be founded west of the Allegheny Mountains and has 122 chapters in addition to many colonies in the United States and Canada. More than 175,000 members have been initiated world-wide. Beta Theta Pi has more than 6,500 undergraduate members and over 120,000 living initiates.
During the spring of 1839 the 8 founding members of Beta began planning something different than the typical literary society. It was in this time that John Reilly Knox and Samuel Taylor Marshall, rooming in the west wing of Old Main with Charles Henry Hardin and James George Smith, jointly conceived and worked together to create Beta Theta Pi. On August 8th, 1839 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, to bring into being the Alpha chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Knox, David Linton and Michael Clarkson Ryan were about to graduate so John Holt Duncan was elected the first president and Smith as Secretary.
In the year Beta Theta Pi was founded, the collection of college fraternities 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 and Delta Upsilon had been founded at Williams College as a protest against secret societies.
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 consummated with The Mystic Seven Society adding chapters at Davidson, North Carolina and Virginia. 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.
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. The Beta spirit endured, grew stronger and by the end of the 20th century a renewed commitment to original Beta principles emerged with the Men of Principle initiative. The initiative was embraced by the members of Beta Theta Pi, born of necessity and nurtured by yet another evolution of young men who yearn for excellence and thrive on brotherhood.
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