A century ago, U. S. college fraternity life was quietly taking form in three genteel Eastern institutions. Phi Beta Kappa, first Greek letter society (1776), had already become nonsecret and purely honorary, with half a dozen chapters. Union College at Schenectady, N. Y. produced the next three: Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi and Delta Phi, between 1825 and 1827. A Kappa Alpha branch was formed at Williams College, a Sigma Phi branch at Hamilton College. The earnest youths who founded these orders adopted Phi Beta Kappa's early mottoes, secret rituals, badges, grips.
Fifth U. S. fraternity was Alpha Delta Phi, founded at Hamilton in 1832, carried westward a year later to Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. Organizer of A. D. was a pious Hamilton student named Samuel Eells, preacher's son, who died at 32 after having been for three years a law-partner of Salmon Portland Chase, later a Lincolnian Supreme Court Justice. At Hamilton there is now a Samuel Eells Memorial Hall and at nearby Westmoreland, his birthplace, a memorial boulder. To these places last week went some 500 of the 10,997 living Alpha Delts, to celebrate the centenary of their fraternity's founding. They viewed the new A. D. Chapter House, built two years ago in anticipation of the centennial. They lunched, played games, sang, heard "More About The Founder" from his nephew Charles P. Eells (Hamilton 1874). Then on Labor Day the Alpha Delts banqueted. Only nonmember of their fraternity at the speakers' table was Hamilton Graduate Alexander Woollcott. Alpha Delt Franklin Delano Roosevelt was unable to accept an invitation to be present. But Bruce Barton was on the program as toastmaster, the following were invited as speakers and listeners: Headmaster Lewis Perry of Exeter, national president of Alpha Delta Phi; President Walter Clark Teagle of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey; Father Frederick Herbert Sill, headmaster of Kent School; President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago; Surgeon General Robert Patterson, U.S.A.
Alpha Delta Phi's colors are emerald green and white, its gems the emerald and the pearl, its flower the lily of the valley. Proud is A. D. to count among many another dead and living famed member the following: Theodore Roosevelt.Charles Francis Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Owen Wister. Stephen Vincent Benet.