School Pins and Rings ~ 52 Ancestors #38

Recently, my brothers and I were going through some items that had come from my mother's collection of family treasures.

Some items had symbols on them that needed to be deciphered.

The first items were relatively easy to decipher. This pendant has the Greek letters Beta Theta Pi. It is just under an inch in diameter and is stored in this small leather case.

Grandfather Lowell Townsend Copeland attended Northwestern University in the early 1920s. He was a proud member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. I shared information from his school yearbook at What Else You Can Find in Yearbooks.

Turning over the pendant reveals TOWG. This was grandfather's nickname when he was in college. I believe this is the only place I have found it other than in oral tradition. 

He later acquired the nickname Toby because there was a character in a play that was named Toby (perhaps Toby Tolliver?) and this character reminded his friends of my grandfather, so they started calling him Toby and it stuck.

In addition to the pendant, there is also a pin.

From the website of Beta Theta Pi: the badge "is an eight-sided Grecian shield of black enamel, bearing three five-pointed stars of gold, a diamond encircled by a laurel wreath, the Greek capital letters Beta Theta Pi, and below the Greek character notation for 1839, the date of the Fraternity’s founding."

On the back of the pin is an inscription: "L.T. Copeland 3-6-22" which I theorize is the date of his acceptance into the fraternity.

With these items was a school ring. At first, I couldn't figure out what its significance was until I realized that I had seen the image before.

It is the logo for the Ogontz School, where my grandmother attended, graduating in 1926. I previously shared her yearbook, where you can see this image on its cover.

Impossible to photograph, the inscription reads:

"H.L. Hunter / The good, the true, the beautiful 1926"

My grandmother's name was Helen Lysle Hunter and this was the school's motto, also printed inside her yearbook.

 

Lowell Townsend Copeland = Helen Lysle Hunter

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My mother

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Me

This week's theme is Symbol.