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HIS fraternity was founded at Richmond, Virginia on the eleventh day of September, 1865, by Otis Allan Glazebrook, Alfred Marshall and Erskine Mayo Ross. It was the first fraternity to be established after the Civil War and was projected as a national organization. The Alpha or "Mother Society" was placed at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Virginia and the Beta at Washington and Lee University in the same town. The first twenty chapters were in the South. In 1881 the first Northern chapter was chartered.

As this was the first fraternity of Southern origin which was successful in maintaining chapters in the North it is interesting to note that this was accomplished through members of other fraternities, Dr. Edgar F. Smith, ΦΚΨ, now Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, who deplored the sectional prejudice which had balked ΑΤΩ in its purpose to become national and generously offered to pledge a suitable Northern nucleus. A proper person was secured in N. Wiley Thomas, a student at Pennsylvania, who was initiated and within two years established six Northern chapters. Far-seeing fraternity men in the North were not slow to realize the advantage or this breaking up of sectional lines and the action of Dr.