Our National History

It happened on December 21, 1865, when today's student probably would have been skiing in Colorado or lounging around his family home. Instead, four students at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, spent their holiday season in the midst of a war-torn community, which had been victimized by raids during the War Between the States.

These four men, among the first 50 students to return to the College following the war, sought to bind their friendship by "mutal pledge of faith and loyalty." James Ward Wood, Stanhope Mcclelland Scot, William Nelson Scott, and William Archibald Walsh formed Phi Kappa Chi, adapting a ritual from an extinct fraternity. However, the members of the group soon changed the name to Kappa Alpha.

During the first year, KA initiated seven new men-among them was Samuel Zenas Ammen. Ammen, unimpressed with the borrowed ritual, decided a new ritual was necessary to bolster the fraternity and attract new memebers from the College. He collaborated with Wood and William Nelson Scott to write a new ritual which changed Kappa Alpha from a fraternity into an order of Christian knights pledged to the highest ideals of character and achievement. Ammen and his contemporaries sought to preserve the masculine virtues of chivalry, respect for others, honor and reverence of God and woman. Thus, they emulated their college's president, Robert E. Lee. Lee was not a member of Kappa Alpha, but his influence on the early memebers shaped the destiny of the young fraternity.