Alpha Sigma Phi was founded on December 6, 1845, at Yale University (it was then known as Yale College). The Yale of 1845 was worlds away from the Yale of today. In 1845, only a very small percentage of American young men (and a minuscule amount of young women) were enrolled in any form of higher education. Alpha Sigma Phi’s founders are Louis Manigault, Horace Spangler Weiser and Stephen Ormsby Rhea.
I find it interesting that the burial spots for the three founders form a large triangle. One is buried in South Carolina, another in Iowa and another in Louisiana. Traveling from those states to New Haven, Connecticut in the 1820s must have been an ordeal.
Manigault, who died in 1899 at 71 years old, is buried in the oldest public cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina. Magnolia Cemetery, Manigault’s final resting place, is on the banks of the Cooper River and was founded in 1849. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Weiser died in 1875 at the age of 47. He is buried in Decorah, Iowa in his family’s plot in Phelps Cemetery.
Rhea died in 1873 and is buried in Clinton, Louisiana, in his family’s plot.
