Department: Archives
Finding the Founders of Georgia Pi
In the past two years, much information about Georgia Pi at the Georgia Military Institute has come to light. One of the treasures from Georgia Pi that has made its way to the Temple is a daguerreotype, dated to around 1857, that may be a group image of the chapter. If all the men in this image can be identified as Georgia Pi members, then this will be the oldest chapter photo in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation’s collection.
The donor, James M. Gilmer (Tennessee-Knoxville 1946), identified his grandfather, James Nicholas Gilmer, as the first person in the front row. The other men in the image have not been definitively identified but may be the remaining six charter members: Samuel Barry Brooks, William Henry Dickinson, Joel Robert Griffin, John Summerfield Lanier, Christopher Columbus Sanders and GMI professor Raleigh Spinks Camp. Vernon Henry Vaughan, who is also considered a chapter founder despite his affiliation with Tennessee Nu since he influenced the GMI faculty to accept the Georgia Pi chapter, does not appear in the image.
Five of the seven men in the image also wear their SAE badges. In addition, two of the badges in the front row appear to be shield-shaped — which are believed to be the badges of school-sponsored literary societies, since similar badges can be seen in other images of GMI students. Of the seven founders of Georgia Pi, five served as president of one of the two literary societies.
After graduating from GMI, the chapter founders fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Brooks was killed at the Battle of Seven Pines. Camp died shortly after the end of the war. Dickinson and Lanier both became planters. Gilmer was a cotton broker and later became very active with the Washington Alpha chapter. Griffin served as Superintendent of Andersonville Prison Camp in 1865 and served two terms in the Georgia Legislature. Sanders still has the distinction of being the only Confederate to be memorialized in a statue on federal property but, unfortunately, the statue was destroyed by a tornado in the 1930s. Vaughan served as acting governor of the Utah Territory from 1870-1871.
August 19th, 2009at 9:11 pm(#)
I am a 1965 graduate of Davidson College, and I was initiated into North Carolina Theta in 1962.
This information about GMI is of interest to me because A. V. Brumby, who was the superintendent of GMI at the time of the Civil War, was my great-great grandfather. Although the school itself was destroyed by General Sherman during the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta, he spared the superintendent’s house, which still stands in Marietta, Georgia, across from the large Confederate cemetery.
January 18th, 2010at 11:09 pm(#)
Anything in the news or history about Georgia Pi catches my attention. My first introduction to SAE was at Georgia Omega’s installation banquet held at the Marietta Hilton Conference Center which now sits on the GMI property. I now live just down the street from that location, and it’s great to drive by such an important piece of SAE history every day.