National ATO History

Alpha Tau Omega was founded in 1865 by three visionary men from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. In the wake of the worst war in the history of the United States, these men, led by Otis Allan Glazebrook, saw the need for healing across the nation. While the wounds of the Civil War were deep, Glazebrook, along with Alfred Marshall and Erskine Mayo Ross, was determined to help in the reunification of the country. With this honorable goal in mind, Alpha Tau Omega was founded on September 11, 1865 at Glazebrook’s home on Clay Street in Richmond, Virginia. Since our founding, our fraternity has become one of the ten largest greek letter fraternities in the country, with over roughly 240 active and inactive chapters, over 181,000 members and 6,500 undergraduate members, we are living up to our founder’s vision of uniting men in brotherhood. For more on our national fraternity history, please visit www.ato.org.

The Creed of Alpha Tau Omega

To bind men together in a brotherhood based upon eternal and immutable principles, with a bond as strong as right itself and as lasting as humanity; to know no North, no South, no East, no West, but to know man as man, to teach that true men the world over should stand together and contend for the supremacy of good over evil; to teach, not politics, but morals; to foster, not partisanship, but the recognition of true merit wherever found; to have no narrower limits within which to work together for the elevation of man than the outlines of the the world. These were the thoughts and hopes uppermost in the minds of the founders of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity.

- Otis Allen Glazebrook 1880