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Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded on March 9, 1856, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Its founders were Noble Leslie DeVotie, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Barratt Rudulph, John Webb Kerr, Samuel Marion Dennis, Wade Hampton Foster, Abner Edwin Patton, and Thomas Chappell Cook. Their leader was DeVotie, who wrote the ritual, created the grip, and chose the name. Rudulph designed the badge. Of all existing national social fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the only one founded in the antebellum South.
None of the founders of SAE were members of any other fraternity, though Noble Leslie Devotie had been invited to join all the other fraternities at the University of Alabama before founding Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
The fraternity had fewer than 400 members when the Civil War began. Of those, 369 went to war for the Confederate States. Seventy-four members of the fraternity, including Noble DeVotie, lost their lives in the war. DeVotie, who served as a Chaplain in the Confederate Army, is noted as the first Alabama soldier to lose his life in the "War of Rebellion."
Harry Bunting and his younger brother, George, emboldened Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters to increase their membership. They wrote encouraging articles in the fraternity's quarterly journal, The Record, promoting better chapter standards. Above all, they gave new life to old chapters in the South (including the mother chapter at Alabama) and founded new ones in the North and West. The Buntings were responsible for an explosion of growth, founding nearly 50 chapters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. When Harry Bunting founded the Northwestern University chapter in 1894, he initiated as a charter member William Collin "Billy" Levere. Bunting passed the torch of leadership to Levere, and for the next three decades, Levere's high spirits brought the fraternity to maturity.
When Levere died on February 22, 1927, the fraternity's Supreme Council decided to name the new national headquarters building The Levere Memorial Temple. Construction of the Temple, an immense German Gothic structure located near Lake Michigan and across from the Northwestern University campus, was started in 1929, and the building was dedicated in the winter of 1930.
Today SAE is the largest social college fraternity by total initiates with more than 289,000 initiated members. At present, SAE has more than 11,000 undergraduates at 300 chapters in 49 states.
In 1898, Clarence Stowell, Frank Bacheldor, and Dana Merril founded Iota Phi on the University of Maine campus. In the year 1900 they applied for membership to the national fraternity of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. After being denied once, they reapplied in 1901 with the help of William C. Levere - an outstanding brother and a model American - they were granted membership. The current chapter house was built in 1904, still standing after many renovations. In 2001, the house celebrated its centenial anniversary with many national fraternity representitives present. In the fall of 2002 there was an accidental fire. While the sprinklers put it out, there was much water damage. The house was brought up to fire code, and in the fall of 2003 the brothers moved back in. During the spring of 2004, Maine Alpha celebrated the grand reopening of the house on the hundredth year of it being built. The dining room was dedicated to John T. Senter, an honor initiate and former cook for the Maine Alpha house. Other Honorary Brothers for Maine Alpha are Dick Hooker VTBE, Thomas Haber MEAL, and Kevin Neumann NYEP. |
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