Kappa Alpha Order - History

History

Kappa Alpha Order was originally founded as Phi Kappa Chi on December 21, 1865, at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. James Ward Wood, William Archibald Walsh, and brothers William Nelson Scott and Stanhope McClelland Scott are the founders of the fraternity. Soon after the founding, the local Virginia Beta chapter of Phi Kappa Psi protested the name "Phi Kappa Chi", due to the similarity of the names, leading Wood to change the name of the fraternity to K.A. by April 1866. The popular Kuklos Adelphon society had gone defunct during the Civil War, and it is suspected that Wood selected the letters K.A. to attract those who were familiar with the old society. Within one year, the order's ritual would be expanded upon and given a new vision by "practical founder", Samuel Zenas Ammen. In the years that followed, the Order spread throughout the Southern United States, as well as many other states such as California, Arizona and New Mexico, a distinguishing factor that separates it from the smaller, northern-based Kappa Alpha Society.

KA is one-third of the Lexington Triad, along with Alpha Tau Omega and Sigma Nu. Robert E. Lee, whose ideals of chivalry and gentlemanly conduct inspired the founders, was designated the "Spiritual Founder" of the Order by John Temple Graves at the 1923 Convention.

Read more about this topic:  Kappa Alpha Order

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)