List of Kappa Alpha Society members


Kappa Alpha Society, founded in 1825, was the progenitor of the modern fraternity system in North America. As of 2015, there are nine active chapters in the United States and Canada. Over the course of its nearly 200-year history, The Kappa Alpha Society has produced a substantial number of notable members in widely varied fields. Following are some of the society's notable members.

Academia

NameChapterInitiation yearNotability
James Phinney Baxter IIIWilliams College1913President of Williams College; winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for History
Paul A. ChadbourneWilliams College1846President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, the University of Wisconsin, and Williams College
Charles F. ChandlerUnion College1858President of New York College of Pharmacy; organizer and first president of the American Chemical Society
Thomas Frederick CraneCornell University1868Dean and acting-president of Cornell University
Amos DeanUnion College1826Founding president of the University of Iowa; president and organizer of Albany Law School; organizer of Albany Medical College; manager of Albany Normal School
Gordon P. EatonWesleyan University Provost and academic vice president of Texas A&M University; president of Iowa State University; director of the United States Geological Survey
John Hart HunterUnion College1824Founder of Kappa Alpha Society
Edward ReganHobart College1949President of Baruch College; president of Jerome Levy Economics Institute
Laurenus Clark SeelyeUnion College1855First president of Smith College
James N. WoodWilliams College1960Former president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago
Leonard WoodsUnion College1826President, Bowdoin College,

Art and architecture

Business

Entertainment

Law

Supreme Court

  • Ward E. Hunt, Union College, 1828. Founder of the New York Republican Party, 1856. Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1872–1882.
  • Ian Binnie, McGill University, 1960. Justice of Canadian Supreme Court from 1998 to 2011.

State and provincial courts

Attorney General

  • Gabriel Bouck, Union College, 1846. Attorney General of Wisconsin, 1858–1860.
  • Wheeler Hazard Peckham, Union College, 1851. Appointed New York City District Attorney by Governor Grover Cleveland, 1884. Prosecuted New York Mayor Abraham Hall and "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall for corruption. Appointed to United States Supreme Court in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland. Not confirmed by U. S. Senate.

Literature and journalism

  • Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Union College, 1831. Leader of one of the earliest overland expeditions to explore the American West. His books were influential in opening the Oregon Trail and California.
  • Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Union College, 1856. Author who revolutionized the social understanding of addiction, inspiring what it has become today.
  • Archibald Rutledge, Union College, 1905. Poet-laureate of South Carolina, author of Home by the River.
  • Leland Stowe, Wesleyan University. Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, 1930. Runner-up for a second Pulitzer in 1940, as war correspondent in World War II.

Medicine

Military

Canada

United States

Politics

Great Britain

Member of Parliament

Canada

Prime minister

Federal Parliament

Provincial premiers

Diplomatic corps

Legislative Assembly (Alberta)

  • Donald Ross Getty, University of Western Ontario, 1953. See '''Canadian Politics and Law: Provincial Premiers'''

United States

Executive Branch

Congress

  • Thomas Allen, Union College, 1832. U.S. Representative from Missouri, 2nd District, 1881-1882 Railroad President. Built first railroad west of the Mississippi..
  • Leander Babcock, Union College, 1828. U.S. Representative from New York, 23rd District, 1851–1853.
  • Charles Lewis Beale, Union College, 1842. U.S. Representative from New York, 12th District, 1859–1861.
  • Gabriel Bouck, Union College, 1846. Wisconsin State Attorney General, 1858–1860. U.S. Representative from Wisconsin, 6th District, 1877–1881.
  • Edward Stuyvesant Bragg, Hobart College, 1844. Wisconsin State Senator 1868–1869. U.S. Representative from Wisconsin, 1877-1883 and 1885-1887 ; U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, 1889–1902; U.S. Consul General in Havana, 1902–1903; U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, 1903-1906. See Armed Forces
  • John M. Carroll, Union College, 1845. U.S. Representative from New York, 18th District, 1871–1873.
  • Charles T. Dunwell, Cornell University, 1870. U.S. Representative from New York, 3rd District, 1903-1908.
  • Rodney Frelinghuysen, Hobart College, 1969. New Jersey General Assembly, 1983–1994. U.S. Representative from New Jersey, 11th District, 1995–present.
  • Lewis Henry, Cornell University, 1905. U.S. Representative from New York, 37th District, 1922–1923.
  • Levi Augustus Mackey, Union College, 1835. U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, 20th District, 1875–1879.
  • Jesse O. Norton, Williams College, 1833. U.S. Representative from Illinois, 11th District, 1853–1857, 1863–1865.
  • Edward Overton Jr., Princeton, 1854. U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, 15th District, 1877–1881.
  • Charles Edward Pearce, Union College, 1861. U.S. Representative from Missouri, 12th District, 1897–1901.
  • Rufus Wheeler Peckham (1809-1873), Union College, 1826. U.S. Representative from New York, 14th District, 1853–1855; Justice of the New York Supreme Court, 1861–1869; Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, 1870-1873.
  • John B. Steele, Williams College, 1835. U.S. Representative from New York, 1861-65.

U.S. Senate

  • James Dixon, Williams College, 1833. U.S. Representative from Connecticut, 1st District, 1845–1849; Connecticut State Senate, 1st District, 1849; U.S. Senator from Connecticut, 1857–1869.
  • Preston King, Union College, 1826. U.S. Representative from New York, 18th District, 1843–1847, 1849–1853; U.S. Senator from New York, 1857–1863. Principal organizer of the Republican Party

Governors

State and territorial politics

Religion

  • Bishop Albert Arthur Chambers, Hobart College 1925. Episcopal Bishop of Springfield, Illinois. Organizer of conservative Anglican Church in North America and successor groups.
  • Bishop Gary Frederick Woolsey, University of Western Ontario, 1965. Anglican Bishop of Athabasca. National Director, Anglican Fellowship of Prayer.

Sciences and engineering

  • Frederick Walker Baldwin, University of Toronto, 1900. As member of Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association made the first public flight in American aviation on March 12, 1908. Director, Graham Bell Labs.
  • Charles Brady King, Cornell University, 1887. Designer of the pneumatic hammer. Designer of first automobile in Detroit.
  • Andrew Herbert Knoll, Lehigh University, 1970. Harvard University: Ph.D., 1977 and Professor of Natural History, Earth and Planetary Sciences, 1982–2021. Author. Recipient of multiple honorary degrees, awards, and scientific society memberships. Science team member for NASA's Mars rover missions, 2004–2019. Awarded the International Prize for Biology, conferred in Tokyo in the presence of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, 2018. Recipient of the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences for 2022, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
  • John Alexander Douglas McCurdy, University of Toronto, 1902. Aviator with Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association. Organizer of the Canadian aviation industry. Lieutenant Governor, Nova Scotia.
  • Lewis Henry Morgan, Union College, 1839. "Father of the Science of Anthropology" Morgan's theories of historical development were the basis for Marx and Engels. President, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1879.

Sports