Theta Delta Chi is looking for strong advisors to help mentor the undergraduates of the fraternity. If you would like to volunteer your time to help strengthen our Charges, please contact Phil Parker at pparker@tdx.org and we can connect you with a Charge in your local area. Help enrich the experiences of our undergraduate men across the country!
Theta Delta Chi, founded in 1847, is the eleventh oldest of college fraternities. The Founders decided early that the scope of the society should be greater than Union College, and they undertook expansion almost at once. In January, 1849, two of the Founders, Green and Akin, together with the first initiate, Francis E. Martindale, organized the Beta Charge (later to be called Beta Proteron) at the Ballston Law School in Ballston, New York. The venture aborted two years later when the school itself moved to another location. No attempt was made to pursue it, and the initiated members were placed upon the Alpha rolls.
The Fraternity had better luck in the next decade. Gamma at the University of Vermont (1852), Delta at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1853), Epsilon at William and Mary (1853), and Zeta at Brown (1853) were quickly established. Eta followed at Bowdoin in 1854, and in the first move westward, Theta was chartered at Kenyon College in Gabier, Ohio that same year. Three charges appeared in 1856: Iota at Harvard, Kappa at Tufts, and Mu at the University of North Carolina. Iota endured one year and went under because the Harvard faculty, in a state of alarm, prohibited fraternities. Iota was revived in 1885 and lasted until 1916. Kappa enjoys the honor of being the oldest living charge in continuous existence.
Three charges were chartered in 1857: Nu at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Xi at Hobart College in Geneva, New York, and Omicron at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The last charge to be established before the outbreak of the War between the States was Pi at Washington and Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in 1858, unless we count the mysterious Rho Charge at the University of South Carolina. It may have been organized in 1859, but any records, if they ever existed, must have perished during the War.
Reorganization and Growth: 1867-1889
The 1868 Convention established the Grand Lodge, which still remains the governing body of Theta Delta Chi. At its origin, the Grand Lodge consisted of two undergraduates and one graduate member. In 1909, the two positions of Graduate Treasurer and Graduate Secretary were added.
Theta Delta Chi enjoyed success during the next few years. Psi was established at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 1868. Omicron Deuteron (first of the Deuterons) at Dartmouth and Rho at Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia (the hypothetical South Carolina Rho has been known since as Rho Proteron) were founded in 1869. Beta was founded at Cornell in 1870, and in that and the subsequent three years Epsilon, Eta, Nu, and Theta were reorganized. Epsilon, Theta, and Nu failed again, in 1872, 1898, and 1881, respectively.
The success thus was not of long duration; between 1870 and 1877 no new charges were added, while five more - Rho, Sigma, Upsilon, Zeta, and Delta - went out of existence. An effort to produce a fraternity magazine yielded one issue in 1869. Inefficiency, carelessness, and apathy reached such a point throughout the Fraternity that in 1872 the President of the Grand Lodge resigned, claiming that his letters to charges brought no replies, and that he was unable to obtain either the Constitution or the Fraternity records from his predecessor.
Things did not significantly improve before the next decade, but between 1877 and 1890 nine new charges were established, and four defunct ones revived. Lambda at Boston University was active from 1877 to 1912, Upsilon Deuteron survived at Wabash from 1879 to 1882, Pi Deuteron was chartered at the College of the City of New York in 1880, and the 1881 Convention assumed responsibility for the strength of the Fraternity by requiring the President of the Grand Lodge to visit every Charge once a year at the general expense. In 1884 The Shield magazine was founded again. Rho Deuteron at Columbia (1883), Nu Deuteron at Lehigh (1884), Mu Deuteron at Amherst (1885), and Epsilon Deuteron at Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (1887) gained strength for Theta Delta Chi in the Northeast. There was opposition to expansion in more distant regions, and petitions were denied from such institutions as Colby, DePauw, South Carolina, and Ohio State.
Civil War
In 1860 the rolls of the Fraternity included Alpha and 17 new charges, of which six - Beta Proteron, Gamma, Iota, Lambda Graduate, Nu, and Rho (Proteron) - were defunct. The War severed the remaining southern charges from the north, and Epsilon and Mu quickly passed out of existence. Theta at Kenyon, of largely southern membership, disbanded as well, while Eta at Bowdoin, Omicron at Wesleyan, and Pi at Washington and Jefferson were unable to stand the stress of wartime and gave way. Many other charges were seriously weakened as undergraduates left college for the army, and Alpha took corrective action to strengthen the Fraternity, establishing three new charges: Sigma at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (1861), Tau at Princeton (1863), and Upsilon at Bucknell in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (1865). Princeton's faculty soon banned fraternities, and Tau was disbanded. In 1867, Phi was chartered at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and Chi at the University of Rochester in New York State.
The dispute over the Lambda Graduate Charge did not settle the important question of who should have power in the national affairs of the Fraternity. In 1859 another attempt was made to curtail the powers of Alpha, which still retained supreme executive authority, but the dissidents were beaten off. In 1867 Alpha collapsed; her demise is attributed to the unfavorable conditions then existing at Union College. The Convention of 1868, representing only eight surviving charges, took action.
Westward Expansion: 1889-1929
Before 1889 only the Theta Charge at Kenyon represented Theta Delta Chi west of the Allegheny Mountains. After that date the westward expansion comes to characterize the Fraternity. In some quarters there was strong opposition to this departure; it was argued that fraternity solidarity and efficient supervision could not be maintained with charges so far distant from the center of activity. But the western colleges, particularly the state universities, were rapidly becoming powerful and established institutions, and their claims were not to be denied. The founding of Gamma Deuteron at The University of Michigan in 1889 led to that of Tau Deuteron at Minnesota in 1892 and Sigma Deuteron at Wisconsin in 1895. During the same period, Theta Deuteron was chartered at MIT, Iota Deuteron at Williams College, and Chi Deuteron at George Washington University. In addition, the old Iota and Chi Charges were reestablished. Although Theta Deuteron failed almost immediately, it was revived in 1906.
At the time of the Fiftieth Annual Convention in 1898, 39 charges had been founded, and 21 were in active existence. In 1900 Theta Delta Chi reached the Pacific coast, establishing Delta Deuteron at Berkeley, followed in 1903 by Eta Deuteron at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The Fraternity became international when Zeta Deuteron was chartered at McGill in Montreal, and Lambda Deuteron followed in 1912 at the University of Toronto. In the Midwest, Kappa Deuteron was established at the University of Illinois (1908); Xi Deuteron was installed at the University of Washington in Seattle (1913); Phi Deuteron came into being at the University of Pennsylvania in 1915; Beta Deuteron was chartered at Iowa State in 1919.
The rapid expansion of the Fraternity scarcely touched upon the South, including only the reestablishment of Noble Epsilon at William and Mary (1904) and Nu at the University of Virginia (1910). The charges at Yale and Harvard were disbanded in 1900 and 1916. The Alpha Charge, disbanded amidst so much ill will over a half century before, was revived in 1923; and the thirty charges of Theta Delta Chi were joined by Psi Deuteron (UCLA) in 1929.
