Beta Theta Pi Fraternity History

Beta Theta Pi (BΘΠ) is an international college social fraternity founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where it is part of the Miami Triad. Beta, as our chapter is nicknamed, was the first college fraternity to be founded west of the Allegheny Mountains and has 134 chapters, in addition to many colonies in the United States and Canada. More than 200,000 members have been initiated world-wide. Beta Theta Pi has more than 8,500 undergraduate members and about 130,000 living initiates.

During the spring of 1839, the eight founding members of Beta began planning something different than the typical literary society. It was in this time that John Reily Knox and Samuel Taylor Marshall, rooming in the west wing of Old Main with Charles Henry Hardin and James George Smith, jointly conceived and worked together to create Beta Theta Pi. On August 8th, 1839, 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, to bring into being the Alpha Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Knox, David Linton and Michael Clarkson Ryan were about to graduate, so John Holt Duncan was elected the first president, with Smith as his Secretary.