Longwood College, in Farmville, Va., was the first
institution of higher learning in Virginia to admit women for
collegiate study. Naturally, it attracted superior students,
many of them daughters of college professors already familiar
with the fraternity idea.
Among the students in the fall term of 1901 were five women
who had become very good friends. Attractive, vivacious, and
intelligent, they had been rushed and bid by the existing
sororities. However, if they accepted these bids, it would mean
that the five would not be sorority sisters.
Virginia Boyd Noell, Juliette Hundley Gilliam, Calva Watson Wooton, Louise Cox Carper, and Mary Williamson Hundley.
On November 15, 1901, a new sorority was organized and named
Alpha Sigma Alpha. As stated in the charter, "The purpose of
the association shall be to cultivate friendship among its
members, and in every way to create pure and elevating
sentiments, to perform such deeds and to mould such opinions as
will tend to elevate and ennoble womanhood in the world."
