The Sisterhood was founded on January 21, 1869, as a seven-member sorority at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. It was the second sorority to be founded in the U.S., after I. C. Sorosis (now known as Pi Beta Phi) in Monmouth, Illinois in April 1867. The founding members were Mary Allen (1848–1927), Ella Stewart (1848–94), Alice Bird [Babb (1850–1926), Hattie Briggs (1849–77), Franc Roads [Elliott (1852–1924), Alice Virginia Coffin (1848–88), and Suela Pearson (1851–1920). The sisterhood was founded after only some of the seven girls were invited to join a chapter of I. C. Sorosis organized in Mount Pleasant a month earlier, and they would not join without the others.