Founders
The eight men considered to be the Founders of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity are:
| William Randolph Cunningham (Chair) | William Randolph Cunningham was only a freshman at the time Delta Tau Delta was formed. Because he was older and had become a Mason, however, he exerted much influence in the group. Cunningham, the picture of integrity, was probably responsible for much of the early language in both the Constitution and Ritual. He served as President of the Karnea in 1883. He was also a minister and held public office in the state of Washington. | |
| Alexander Campbell Earle | Alexander Campbell Earle, the youngest of the group of eight founders of Delta Tau Delta, was said to be the biggest asset to the fraternity's founding. He went on to become a Captain in the Second South Carolina Volunteers, where he commanded his own company. For many years his whereabouts were unknown and he was believed dead, but he was finally located living in Arkansas. He later moved to Texas, and is buried in the State Cemetery in Austin, where the local fraternity still makes an annual pilgrimage. | |
| Richard Havener Alfred | Richard Havener Alfred, at 26 the oldest of the group of founders of Delta Tau Delta, became a minister and a physician. | |
| Henry King Bell | Henry King Bell, a Kentuckian, lived only six years after graduation. His contribution to the Fraternity was immense; without him, there would be no Delta Tau Delta today. Bell responded to a call for help from the last remaining members of the Bethany chapter who were leaving to join the armed forces. | |
| John Calhoun Johnson | John Johnson became a lawyer and politician. He was the political advisor to John W. Davis, the democratic candidate for president in 1924. One of Johnson's favorite pastimes was conducting tours of Bethany and pointing out the room where Delta Tau Delta was founded. He outlived the other founders by eight years. | |
| Jacob Snedeker Lowe | Jacob Lowe hosted the first meetings of the group in a rooming house which has now become an international shrine for the Fraternity. Lowe became a professor and later a college president. | |
| Eugene Tarr | Eugene Tarr was a "townie" whose home was only a short six miles from Bethany. He stayed in West Virginia after college. Tarr became a noted speaker, lawyer, and editor of the local newspaper. | |
| John Lucius Newton Hunt | John Lucius Newton Hunt was the scholar of the group. After graduating from Bethany, Hunt went on to become the valedictorian of his class at New York University's School of Law. He then served for several years as New York's Commissioner of Education. |
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Famous quotes containing the word founders:
“It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
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And every bride’s ambition satisfied.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)