Theta Chi
One of the oldest men’s college fraternities in the United States was founded on April 10, 1856, at Norwich University, in Norwich, Vermont. Two young cadets, Frederick Norton Freeman and Arthur Chase, met in Freeman’s room in the university’s Old South Barracks, and took oaths declaring each other “true and accepted members” into their new society, and the very next evening they accepted their first two initiates, Edward Bancroft Williston and Lorenzo Potter. Though the early years were precarious, the Fraternity survived both the War Between the States and a massive fire that destroyed the Norwich campus in 1866, to become the brotherhood we know today as Theta Chi.
