A-24. March 1, Dear Liz,

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1 March 1, 1996 A-24 Dear Liz, In January, Chapter EO, Rockport, was hostess for the Corpus Christi P.E.O. Council Founders Day meeting and luncheon. The enclosed program was the one we used which was very well received. Kathy West, a member of EO, had written it for a chapter meeting a year or so ago. We hope it is good enough to add to the state file. Lovingly, Margy Reese, EO 1500 W. Matlock #22 Aransas Pass, TX

2 Kathy West, EO 1869 INTRODUCTION: Today we honor our P.E.O. Founders and recall the early beginnings of our sisterhood. It was in 1869 that an I C Sorosis Society Chapter was started at Iowa Weslyan University where our founders were students. Not all of our founders were invited to join ICS and those receiving invitations declined, not wishing to break up the friendship of the seven. Hattie Briggs was the first to say, "Let's have an order of our own." Franc Roads and Mary Allen agreed with her and enlisted the cooperation of Alice Bird, Suela Pearson, Alice Coffin and Ella Stewart to organize their own society. Alice Bird wrote the oath and the constitution. Alice Coffin suggested that their emblem be a star. In order to "identify" themselves to others, they made white ruffled percale aprons all alike - cut high on the left shoulder to wear their "star" pins. Can't you just picture these seven young ladies as they marched into class wearing their aprons and pins for the first time and so proud of their new society. The date was January 21,

3 1869 The year was It was the year in which seven young ladies founded our P.E.O. sisterhood on the firm foundation of faith, love, purity, justice and truth. We have many times thought about how their young lives were filled with love of family and of each other. Mount Pleasant, Iowa was a perfect setting for parties, school and fun. But what was the rest of the world doing in 1869? It is often said that we are products of our times. President Ulysses S. Grant began his first term in the White House. His victories during the War Between the States won him great popularity in the North. Southerners appreciated his generous terms to Robert E. Lee. The War Between the States had only been over for four years. Hatred and bitterness were still common emotions. The previous President, Andrew Johnson, had been tried for impeachment. In the background of the Johnson impeachment lay a deep and bitter difference of opinion concerning the proper treatment of the defeated Confederate states. Johnson favored a much milder policy than that proposed by a strong group in Congress. Many of the Southern States still were not accepted into the Union. Virginia adopted its constitution in 1869 and was readmitted into the Union the next year. In that same year, 1869, Georgia was expelled from the Union after being readmitted following the War because it refused to ratify the 15th amendment. In 1869, Robert E. Lee was serving as President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. He soon raised the small college to high levels of scholarship. Young men from all parts of the South flocked to "General Lee's school" which was named Washington and Lee 3

4 University after his death in Lee urged his students and friends to keep peace and accept the outcome of war. "Make your sons Americans," he urged. Back in Washington, Grant was having his problems of a different nature. Political corruption spread to all levels of government. The Society of Tammany, or its better known nickname "Tammyany Hall," wielded vast powers as a Democratic political machine in New York. William Tweed became political boss of Tammany Hall and cheated New York City out of several millions of dollars. Financial speculators tried to corner the gold market by buying all the gold in New York. They planned to force others to buy from them at inflated prices. President Grant ordered the government's gold to be sold to end the panic. This was called "Black Friday." The President of the Dominican Republic offered to sell his country to the United States. Grant's secretary signed a treaty of annexation with the republic. However, the Senate rejected the treaty and denounced Grant! The great national industries became possible when the railroads created national markets. Men who packed meats, milled flour, made shoes, built wagons and marketed kerosene could soon sell their products anywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1869, the tracks of the Union Pacific joined those of the Central Pacific at Promontory Point near Ogden, Utah. It was celebrated by driving a golden spike into the last rail. This formed the first transcontinental rail line. By the time the golden spike was in the ground, the first refrigerator car was built. George Pullman introduced a dining car that had its own kitchen. 4

5 In England, a British cartoonist pictured the Uncle Sam symbol as a tightwad in This might have had something to do with the fact that the United States claimed that Great Britain had Civil War debts to pay. Because Britain had built warships for the Confederate States which had destroyed much of the Northern shipping, the U.S. was asking to be paid 15 1/2 million dollars! Britain finally paid! Napoleon II was Emperor in France in The French were preparing for the Franco-Prussian War. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay were fighting Paraguay in a war called the Triple Alliance. Needless to say, Paraguay lost. The Suez Canal opened. And Austria became the first country to issue postal cards. Count Leo Tolstoy published the final installment of War and Peace. It dealt with the problems of individuals caught up in the war. It presented Tolstoy's theory that it is not heroes who make history, but destiny that produces heroes. Gandhi of India was born. In Europe at this time was a young American author whose name became a household word Mark Twain. He was writing Innocents Abroad which many consider his first important book. His intention in this book was to see the old world with his own eyes, not as other and earlier American tourists had seen it -- to tell what he had seen, not what he had read. His Americanism 5

6 destroyed the subservience of Americans to the local ideal of the mother-lands, and broke the umbilical cord that attached them to Europe. Back in the United States, everyone was reading and talking about sports just as today! The horses were running at Belmont Park and Saratoga. The first all-professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was organized. later called the Red Legs! Baseball was the most popular game during the "60's." An organization was started to keep it pure and amateur. The Red Stockings decided that it was hypocritical to receive money from gamblers and still call themselves amateurs. The Y.M.C.A. built its first building in New York City. For the first time, all the activities of the association were gathered together under the same roof. Many colleges were founded in Among those were two private women's colleges in Pennsylvania-Chatham and Wilson. Others founded were Missouri Western College, Purdue in Indiana, St. Cloud in Minnesota, Tougaloo in Mississippi, and Trinity of Texas. In religion, English and American scholars were meeting in England to work on a new revision of the Bible. In Rome, the first Vatican Council was convened by Pius IX. Bishop Lamy who built the Cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico was among the 600 bishops in white miters and capes who met in St. Peter's Church. 6

7 In music, William Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan fame was writing a collection of humorous ballads which were later used in their operettas. Richard Wagner, a German composer, completed the third act of "Siefried" as his opera, "Das Rhingold," was being performed in Munich. Johannes Brahms, another German composer, wrote "Alto Rhapsody" for contralto solo, male chorus and orchestra in Henrick Ibsen, a Norwegian dramatist and father of modern drama, produced his first important social problem play, "The League of Youth." Among the books published in 1869 was Horatio Alger's Luck and Puck, James Lowell's book of verse, The Cathedral, and Robert Browning's The Ring and The Book. People were reading Horace Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life. Following his recommendation of "Go West, young man" let's take a look at what was happening in the West in The territorial legislature of Wyoming gave women the right to vote. This was the first such action in the nation's history. It wasn't until 51 years later that all women could vote. With the opening of the Overland Railroad in 1869, a brief bright epoch ended in San Francisco. It no longer stood for the unique frontier that captivated the mind's eye. It had lost its earlier appeal to the imagination. One by one, the writers who had reached it by clipper ship or steamship, by stagecoach or covered wagon, left by train. Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller and Bret Harte left for Europe. In spite of almost constant Indian fighting, Arizona made great progress. Gold and silver discoveries brought many miners to the territory. By 1869, farmers in the Salt River Valley near present day Phoenix had begun irrigating their fields. 7

8 Texas was still ruled by a military government with a republican governor, Elisha M. Pease. Texas was readmitted to the Union the following year. Texas grew in population when the James Garrett McKinnon family arrived in Limestone County, Texas in James, his wife, Ellen Stewart McKinnon and their eleven children migrated from Lee County, Georgia. Four more children were later born. Carolina Missouri McKinnon, the youngest child making the long wagon trip, was Kathy's great-grandmother. We know that Ellen Stewart McKinnon was a busy homemaker and mother, and she started a new home and life in the West. Women in all parts of the world were busy and doing exciting things. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton founded the radical National Women's Suffrage Association in May of It opposed Amendment 15 to the Constitution because the amendment gave the vote to Negro men, but not to women. Clara Barton, who devoted her life to the good of humanity and founded the American Red Cross, went to Switzerland in 1869 to serve as a nurse at the battle line in the Franco-Prussian War. Florence Nightingale was busy in England with her nursing school. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, a temperance reformer and advocate of women's rights, became famous in earlier years for her "Turkish pantaloon," called bloomers. In 1869, she was living in Council Bluffs, Iowa, continuing her writing and lecturing in favor of equal rights for women. Perhaps our Sisters heard her lecture. This was the world in which our seven founders lived when they organized our beloved P.E.O. Good and bad, war and peace, hatred and love of mankind, corruption and reform, giving and taking, intolerance and belief in others. Does it sound all too familiar? And this is the way it was in 1869 when P.E.O. was founded. 8