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From left are Charles Everett Pace (Booker
T. Washington), Helen Lewis (Jane Addams), Jerome Kills Small (Ohiyesa),
Ruth Ann Alexander (Chief Chautauquan), tent master Fred Fisher, Jeffrey
Smith (Andrew Carnegie) and John Lehman (Theodore Roosevelt). They were
featured in the final year of “Behold Our New Century,” which explored
early 20th century visions of America. |
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"Chautauqua is the most American thing in
America."
-- President Theodore Roosevelt |
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For more than a century, the Chautauqua
has been drawing
large audiences and keeping community spirit alive and
well.
Chautauqua
in Nebraska has an illustrious
history
Culture, Companionship, Chautauqua –
the three words were synonymous in Nebraska 70 or 80 years ago. Long before
the Great Plains Chautauqua of today, the Chautauqua that occasionally
crossed the state brought a diversity of ideas and discussion to a largely
rural population.
They evoked mental images of tent communities,
orators describing the Holy Land or the evils of drink, band concerts,
flags waving, the voice of William Jennings Bryan ringing out across the
prairie, shimmering waves of summer heat. For generations living before
radio and television dials provided instant entertainment, weeklong Chautauqua
provided the only means of enlightenment and mental stimulation to settlers
scattered throughout the Great Plains. In Nebraska, Chautauqua reached
its peak.
The name itself comes from a resort community
in New York State where, in 1875, a summer program of lectures, sermons,
and music for Methodist Sunday school teachers attracted such enthusiastic
audiences that within a few years similar programs sprang into existence
for the public in other parts of the country.
On June 26, 1883, the first Chautauqua
program in the state opened in Crete. The next year the association acquired
109 acres along the Blue River and by the summer of 1885 had two lecture
halls and a dining hall built, seven hundred trees set out, and a bridge
installed.
Special trains brought culture-hungry
participants from Wymore, Lincoln, and Hastings, and one delegation came
all the way from Chadron to live in the tent city to hear the 10-day series
of inspirational lectures, lantern-slide illustrated travelogs and musical
concerts. One day in 1888, 16,000 persons streamed onto the campgrounds
which by then included croquet grounds, lawn tennis courts, boating facilities,
and fireworks at night. The Crete Chautauqua was considered the greatest
conference in the Missouri Valley.
The success of the Crete Chautauqua encouraged
businessmen in Beatrice to start a similar enterprise, and on June 28,
1889, the first Beatrice Chautauqua opened at the new Chautauqua Park, which had been
equipped with an amphitheatre, band stand and boat houses. The street railway
extended its track to the grounds so that horse-cars could run from the
center of town to the gate of the Chautauqua grounds. The railroads gave
discounts on excursion trains to the Interstate Chautauqua, as it was called,
to attract audiences from Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado as well
as Nebraska.
In 1907, Hastings established a Chautauqua
with a permanent pavilion and the other usual accoutrements, the local
newspaper publishing tent numbers of the families who had rented association-owned
tents for the week so that local stores could deliver groceries and other
goods to the tenters and families could locate their friends for sociability.
The Lincoln Chautauqua was called the
Epworth Assembly and was a direct reflection of the Chautauqua Institute
in New York state. Most of the early Chautauqua programs were patterned
after the original institute, serving heavy doses of Protestant Bible study,
philosophy and morality, interspersed with humorous sketches, crayon talks,
patriotic exhortations, travelogues and music, either vocal or instrumental.
Among the most popular of the Chautauqua
speakers were William Jennings Bryan, Sen. Robert LaFollette, Lincoln McConnell
and Sam P. Jones. They had to be strong of voice and sound of wind in pre-loudspeaker
days to be heard in the huge tents that flapped in the Nebraska summer
breezes. Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heinck with her big contralto voice
was a favorite singer.
Other Chautauqua programs sprang up, in
Geneva, Fullerton, Hebron, Long Pine, Osceola and other towns, tent cities
blossoming in picnic spots or pastures for week-long periods in the summer
time, the biggest tent serving as the pavilion, smaller tents as dining
halls and junior Chautauqua centers for children, and scores of smaller
tents to house the eager audiences who flocked in from miles around to
absorb culture for a week or two. Hundreds of other families in the
neighborhood drove in by day, returning home to farm chores by night, their
minds crammed with the wonders they had heard.
The schedule was much the same for all
sessions, with programs in the afternoon and evening, all of them uplifting
and educational, and special children's programs in the mornings and afternoons.
On Sundays some churches in town cancelled their services so that parishioners
could attend Chautauqua.
After 1900 many small-town Chautauquas
were part of the circuits established by professional promoters who supplied
touring groups who moved from town to town to provide most of the entertainment
and culture. Standard Chautauqua & Lyceum System and Redpath were two
of the largest, utilizing faculty members and students from the University
of Nebraska for many of the lectures and musical performances. The circuit
Chautauqua emphasized entertainment more than serious lectures or debates
on politics and sociology.
By the time of World War I, Chautauqua
was beginning to dwindle in importance as other means of diversion and
education evolved such as early-day motion pictures, crystal-set radios
and automobiles. Although it continued in smaller towns until well into
the 1920s, significance of Chautauqua on the Nebraska scene then was not
great. But while it lasted, Chautauqua performed an important service
to the people of Nebraska.
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Chautauqua
is the acme of human
thought
By J. D. REED
From the 1912 Chautauqua Program Book
Elmwood, Nebraska
The Chautauqua as an Institution, as an
ideal is the acme of the best cultural instincts in the human thought.
It is the stage improved and purified.
It gives the finest in literature clearly
and interestingly interpreted and personified by condensing into an hour
the Novel.
It is classic music popularized, popular
music dignified.
It is Oratory not only beautiful sound
and language, but bearing a vital message.
It is entertainment having educational
value.
It brings the world’s art, literature,
and science to your door.
It is the most effective, most attractive,
the most democratic college that the people have today.
If you believe in making better homes,
better churches and schools, better character, better civilization, in
making life brighter and happier and in making young men and women less
anxious to go to the big city to live but satisfied to stay in the home
community, then be a booster and patron of the Elmwood Chautauqua.
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