Theodore Roosevelt termed it "the most American thing in
America." William Jennings Bryan spoke on its platforms for thirty years.
And in hundreds of communities throughout the United States, people waited all year to experience it.
They called it "Chautauqua," after an Institute in New York State, itself named for the picturesque lake where it was situated.
But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, "Chautauqua" meant more than a place.
It meant education. It meant culture. It meant wholesome entertainment.
And most of all, especially for people in rural communities, it meant a connection with the wider world.
The Chautauqua movement was a social and cultural phenomenon that began simply enough in 1874, when John H. Vincent, a young Methodist minister, started a summer school for Sunday School teachers at a camp site at Lake Chautauqua, New York.
An open air pavilion housed lectures and community singing, the participants stayed in tents, and the session was characterized by good food, healthy recreation, and a high moral tone.
The next year Vincent persuaded President Ulysses S. Grant to speak, and Chautauqua's reputation was made.
Soon college presidents, popular authors, moral crusaders, and humorists were regular speakers at Chautauqua.
Presidents Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft followed Grant, as did Jane Addams, Carry Nation, Booker T. Washington, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Thomas Edison.
Chautauqua came to mean study, lectures, music, dramatic interpretation, and camping by the lake shore, "the best in the cultural and educational world, with good food and fireworks, for a grand total of six to ten dollars a
week."
Chautauqua was rooted in a thirst for knowledge, a thirst that went beyond a two-week summer institute.
Devotees wrote back to learn what books they should read during the long winters.
In response, Vincent developed a four-year home study course, known as the Chautauqua Scientific and Literary Circle, and within ten years, more than 100,000 people were
enrolled. In an age when few colleges or universities accepted women, and opportunities for higher education for married women and businessmen were almost nonexistent, Vincent's correspondence course filled a deep need. "Education," Vincent wrote, "once the peculiar privilege of the few, must in our best earthly state become the valued possession of the
many."
Excerpts from "They Called It Chautauqua",
by Michael V. Hazel
Our format involves the characters introducing themselves to the audience, sharing their life stories with anecdotes and quotations from their writing, and then answering audience questions.
Afterwards the audience meets each scholar and asks questions about the portrayed
character. Answers come from the character and are based on the scholar’s perspective and study.
The theme for the 1st Annual Lake Tahoe Chautauqua was
"Rendezvous with Destiny", the 1930's and 1940's including World War II.
Our 2nd year focused on our revolutionary founding fathers and our 3rd year
celebrated the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
We are encouraging audience participation not only in asking
questions of our speakers, but also in dressing in period clothes.
