12 Facts About Chautauqua

1.

Chautauqua was an adult education and social movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,582
2.

Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,583
3.

The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,584
4.

The next year, 1874, the New York Chautauqua Assembly, was organized by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in the state of New York.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,585
5.

The Chautauqua movement beginning in the 1870s may be regarded as a successor to the Lyceum movement earlier in the 19th century, from the 1840s.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,586
6.

Such a Chautauqua was generally built in an attractive semi-rural location a short distance outside an established town with good rail service.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,587
7.

Flood stopped editing the magazine in 1899, and journalist Frank Chapin Bay, schooled by Chautauqua, took over; the magazine became less a general magazine and more the official organ of the organization.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,588
8.

Early religious expression in Chautauqua was usually of a general nature, comparable to the later Moral Re-Armament movement.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,589
9.

One example, Lakeside Chautauqua, is privately owned but affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,590
10.

In contrast, the Colorado Chautauqua is entirely nondenominational and mostly secular in its orientation.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,591
11.

Chautauqua was considered wholesome, family entertainment and appealed to middle classes and people who considered themselves to be respectable or aspired to respectability.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,592
12.

Over time, as vaudeville became more respectable, Chautauqua became more permissive in what they considered to be acceptable acts.

FactSnippet No. 2,333,593