Sweet Adelines International was established in 1945 by Edna Mae Anderson of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The aim was to teach and train its members in music and to create and promote barbershop quartets and other musical groups. She gathered a group of women who wanted to participate in the "chord-ringing, fun-filled harmony" that their husbands, members of the men's Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), were singing. SPEBSQSA has since changed its name to the Barbershop Harmony Society.