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… So the stage was set for the regular meeting — the official Founding of Beta Theta Pi. The 1838-39 academic year closed with graduation on Aug. 8, and that evening these eight young men slipped secretly up the steps of Old Main, entering the Hall of the Union Literary Society at the southeast corner of the third floor with keys that Knox possessed because he had been president of that society.

At nine o’clock on the evening of the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 1839, eight earnest young men, all students at Miami University, held the first meeting of Beta Theta Pi in the Hall of the Union Literary Society, an upper room in the old college building (known as ‘Old Main’). The eight founders in the order in which their names appear in the minutes were:

John Reily Knox, 1839
Samuel Taylor Marshall, 1840
David Linton, 1839
James George Smith, 1840
Charles Henry Hardin, 1841
John Holt Duncan, 1840
Michael Clarkson Ryan, 1839
Thomas Boston Gordon, 1840
“of ever honored memory”

173 years strong today.  Proud to be a Beta.

___kai___