Part 3: Chautauqua -- The Original TED Talk

 

PART 3: Chautauqua -- The Original TED Talk[1]

Young Adult Mennonite Group Attends
Farmington Chautauqua, August 1910

By Elizabeth Hervey Osborn

Part 1 --  Part 2 -- Part 3 -- Part 4 -- Part 5 -- Part 6 -- Part 7 -- Part 8

“The most American thing in America,” Teddy Roosevelt supposedly said[2], was the Chautauqua Movement.

Before the days of internet, television, radio, and moving pictures, rural folk had a strong appetite for more knowledge on important cultural, political, and philosophical matters of the day. In the years following the United States Civil War, Methodist church leaders concerned about the quality of adult education organized an annual gathering of Sunday School teachers near Chautauqua Lake, New York, where they brought in the best thinkers and speakers they could find. The gatherings at Chautauqua Lake became an “educational and cultural retreat” for idea-thirsty people of many denominations.[3]

Sharp-eyed businessmen noted the popularity of the Chautauqua experience and saw opportunity.

In the summer of 1904, Keith Vawter, a Chicago booking agent for public speakers joined with Charles Horner to set up a “Chautauqua Circuit”:  a traveling week-long immersive Chautauqua experience that brought speakers and musicians to small towns across the Midwest.[4] 

The latest in technological innovation mingled with traditional rhetorical arts  – lectures, charts, shadow puppets, costumes, chalk talks – to entertain and educate.

 Local civic leaders would form a corporation to organize and advertise the events, and arrange logistics, seating,  ticket sales, housing, and even child care. A Chautauqua was deemed a “success” when it earned not only enough to pay the speaker fees and circuit staff, but also yield profit for the local organizers. Increased foot traffic would benefit  the lucky town’s shops and vendors as folks from miles around flocked to town for the day or the week.

The big tent of Vawter’s Chautauqua Circuit first came to Farmington’s Anderson Park in July 1905 and kept coming every summer for the next 24 years.[5]

Headlining that first event was William Jennings Bryan, noted orator and progressive politician, whose pro-agriculture speech was especially well received. A spicy mix of religion and politics wrapped up the gathering.

Over the next several years, luminaries like Baseball Preacher Billy Sunday, brought record crowds to Anderson Park.

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Image Index:

1. President Theodore Roosevelt at Chautauqua Lake, NY, August 11 1905.   Stereopticon image in Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/stereo.1s02154/
   
   
2.  L.W. Ford, illustrator, The Lyceumite & Talent, July 1907 p 28.
   
   
3. Stereopticon with Portable Moving Picture Machine, Advertisement in lyceumite & talent, July 1907,  p77.
   
   
4. Charles Burgderfer, "The Man with the Smile Worthwhile", 1909 Promotional Flier, p. 3. Located in Iowa University Libraries Digital Library collection "Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century", https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/island.

5. Third Annual Chautauqua, August '07, Farmington Iowa. https://www.farmingtoniowa.com/pennys-postcards.html.
   
   
6. 22 July 1905, Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier, page 5.
   
   
7.  29 July 1905, Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, page 12.
   
   
8. Keokuk County Chautauqua Institute, Sigourney IA, August 1905, Handbill advertising William Jennings Bryan. Iowa University Libraries, Digital Library, "Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century. https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Atc_59841
   
   
9. Evangelist and Orator William A (Billy) Sunday, https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Atc_16055_16053 

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[1] Jeff Degraff, “Before There Were TED Talks, There Were Chautauquas,” Inc. (Online Newsletter Edition, undated), https://www.inc.com/jeff-degraff/start-an-innovation-chautauqua.html.

[2] Many contemporary and secondary sources repeat this quote, see, e.g., Alton Packard, “Chautauqua”, the Lyceum and Talent, July 1907 p. 11. I have not been able to find the original ; however, it appears to be a paraphrased variation on what Theodore Roosevelt said prefacing his speech on the Monroe Doctrine at the ‘Mother Chautauqua’ in New York State on 11 August 1905: “Chautauqua is typically American, in that it is typical of America at its best.” See George Cooper, “Chautauqua, No Matter What It Means; Distinctively American”, The Chautauquan Daily 13 August 2013, https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/chautauqua-no-matter-what-it-means-distinctively-american/.

[3] Paul S. Worboys, Crooked Lake Review, “Chautauquas: The Most American Thing in America.” September 1994. https://www.crookedlakereview.com/articles/67_100/78sept1994/78worboys.html. See also University of Iowa Libraries: Special Collections “Traveling Culture; Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century.” https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/tc/

[4] University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections: Records of the Redpath Chautauqua Collection.

[5] After the 24^th Farmington Chautauqua closed in August 1928, the Farmington Chautauqua corporation elected a new board of directors.  Burlington Hawkeye, 4 September 1928, page 19. However, no advertising or report of a Farmington Chautauqua is mentioned in local newspapers in 1929.