The Founding

At nine o'clock on the
evening of the eighth day of the eighth month of the
year 1839, eight earnest young men, all students at
Miami University, held the first meeting of Beta Theta
Pi in the Hall of the Union Literary Society, an upper
room in the old college building known as "Old Main".
The eight founders in the order in which their names
appear in the minutes were:



John Reily Knox, 1839

Samuel Taylor Marshall, 1840

David Linton, 1839

James George Smith, 1840

John Holt Duncan, 1840

Charles Henry Hardin, 1841

Michael Clarkson Ryan, 1839

Thomas Boston Gordon, 1840



"of ever honored memory"

The Founder's Paragraph
(above) is a summary of the first regular meeting of Beta
Theta Pi. To better understand this beginning some
background of life in 1839 is necessary.

In 1839, when Beta Theta Pi
was founded at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, the college
fraternity world 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,
Middletown, Conn., and Delta Upsilon had been founded at
Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., as a protest
against secret societies.

College life at Miami
University in 1839 was very different from today. There
were only 135 students, all male, and six professors.
Tuition would be quite apealing to us at only $24 per
year. The academic year lasted from early October until
early August with breaks for Christmas and Easter. There
were only three main buildings, Elliott and Stoddard halls
serving as dormitories and one main academic building
known as Old Main.

 Students at Miami
often had made a large commitment going off to college,
perhaps leaving a farm short handed back home. Academics
were a pursuit not to be taken lightly. This is
demonstrated by the most important extracurricular
activities being membership in the Erodelphian and Union
Literary Societies. Each had accrued substantial libraries
since their formation in 1825. Students gathered on Friday
afternoons in the society halls on the third floor of Old
Main where they read and criticized essays, debated, and
developed skills in extemporaneous speaking. Each sought
to provide its members mutual improvement, the cultivation
of fellowship, and the promotion of standards of conduct.
Most students were members of these societies. Knox was
elected President of the Union Lit in June 1839 while
Linton served as Treasurer of the Erodelphians for a year.

For some of the students
something was missing. During the winter and spring of
1839 our Founders began planning something different. It
was in this time that Knox and Marshall, rooming in the
west wing of Old Main with Harding and Smith, jointly
conceived and worked together to create Beta Theta Pi. On
August 8th 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. Five of them were
only 19 and four of them just barely so. Knox, Linton, and
Ryan were about to graduate so Duncan was elected the
first president and Smith as Secretary.

When the five remaining
Founders returned to Miami in October they began to
recruit new brothers. At their first meeting they elected
Smith's cousin, Henry Hunter Johnson, and in February
added John Whitney, Alexander Paddack, and A. W. Hamilton,
two of whom would soon play important roles in founding
the Cincinnati Chapter. And so the Founding of Beta Theta
Pi was complete.