National Chautauqua Background

1974 was the Centennial year of the Chautauqua movement.  Founded in 1874 at Chautauqua, New York by Lewis Miller and John H. Vincent, the Chautauqua has enriched the religious and cultural lives of many millions of Americans. Miller was a manufacturer, Vincent a Methodist minister who later became a Bishop.

Established along the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York, Chautauqua in its first year introduced summer classroom study to the nation, and by 1881, correspondence courses.  It is interesting to note that Dr. William Rainey Harper, Chautauqua Summer School principal from 1887 to 1898 incorporated many Chautauqua ideas into the program of the new University of Chicago when he became its first president in 1891.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, begun in 1878 as the first "book club" in America, has enrolled over one million members and at one time sponsored 10,000 local reading circles in towns throughout the country.

Traveling Chautauquas were introduced at the turn of the twentieth century.  The Chautauqua Circuit was organized to give rural America an extension of the original Chautauqua programs designed to provide education, inspiration, and entertainment.   It is estimated that in 1921 the Tent/Chautauqua Movement reached some 35,000,000 Americans, many of whom today remember the great programs under the brown top.

While many of these ten-day summer programs were staged inside huge circus-like tents, others were held in existing structures, while still others were presented in specially-constructed, permanent, tent like auditoriums which became permanent cultural centers.

During the Chautauqua hey-day, 21 traveling companies, operating 93 circuits presented programs to 8,580 towns and their environs.  In commemoration of the Chautauqua Centennial, the U. S. Postal Service designed and issued, on August 6, 1974, a colorful 10-cent stamp picturing a typical Chautauqua tent-scene, honoring the Chautauqua movement in the United States.

These traveling Chautauquas featured religious leaders of national renown, educators, authors, statesmen, classical musicians, Shakespearian actors, bands, orchestras, glee clubs, opera stars; and also special programs geared to the youth of America.

Traveling Chautauquas disappeared from the American scene in 1932 with the wide-spread advent of the radio, the automobile, and the talking motion picture, all of which brought culture and entertainment into virtually every rural neighborhood and home in America.

The 1974 two-month Chautauqua Centennial Celebration at Lake Chautauqua, New York presented such headliners as opera stars Robert Merrill and Richard Tucker, Dr. Karl Menninger, The National Chorale, Chet Atkins, Ferrant & Teicher, Stan Kenton, and Victor Borge.

The Honorary Centennial Committee included such celebrities as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Van Cliburn, Roberta Peters, Lowell Thomas, Duke Ellington, Jacob Javitts, Raymond Massey, and Yehudi Menuhin.

The Chautauqua idea of human enrichment, as established at Chautauqua, New York, has grown into America's leading center for continuing education, ecumenical Christianity, and the arts.  Today's permanent Chautauqua is still growing and gaining in prestige and popularity.  It has developed into an important symbol of the relationship between religion and culture, readily accommodating the diversity of expression so characteristic of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  It is distinctively an American institution which, in its second century, will further exert its influence as a center of learning for young and old.

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