Judge speaks at Cornerstone meeting
WAYNESBURG – Judge Farley Toothman asked members of the Cornerstone Genealogical Society how many could spell “Chautauqua.” The jurist and society member found not too many during his presentation Tuesday.
Chautauqua is a Seneca Indian word that means “tied in the middle” and Chautauqua Lake is an 18-mile lake situated in the lower southwestern part of New York, Toothman explained. He also said Chautauqua Institute sits on this lake and the Historic District of Chautauqua Institute is on the National Register of Historic Places.
This institution is a nonprofit adult education center and summer resort on 750 acres. It was founded in 1874 by Lewis Miller and Methodist Bishop John Vincent as a teaching camp for Sunday school teachers.
The early tent camps eventually gave way to cottages, rooming houses and cottage hotels and during the season it offers educational events including programs in the arts, education, religion and recreation.
It offers educational activities to the public during the season, which lasts nine weeks, with public events including popular entertainment, theater, symphony, ballet, opera and visual arts exhibitions. The institute also includes school of special studies and a residential music program of intensive study, Toothman said.
Chautauqua Institute was the first institution to give certificates to teachers in physical education, music, pre-school and art. There are outdoor classrooms, and one can listen to many popular authors speak.
Toothman said Smithsonian magazine named Chautauqua, N.Y., as the No. 1 “Best Small Town to Visit in 2014” in the cover story of its April 2014 issue.
With the start of this institute the public’s thinking on leisure time was changed. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Chautauqua is the most American thing in America.”
In 1904, cities were encouraged to form their own Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Reading Circles (CLSRC). There were about 250 of these throughout the United States, but few exist today. A CLSRC was organized in Waynesburg on the first Friday in October 1903, with the first meeting in the home of Miss Myrtle Parker.
Their social gatherings included indoor and outdoor picnics and informal receptions. Officers were: Dr. J.M. Howard, president; Miss Mary Sayers, vice president; Miss Myrtle Parker, secretary ; and Mrs. J.J. Purman, treasurer.
In 1907, Chautauqua Institute organized a seven-day circuit of talent, and Waynesburg was among them. The institute would supply the tent, talent, advertising and work crews, with the locals handling advance ticket sales. In other words, they would come to a town, set up their tent and offer programs for seven days to the locals and then move on to the next town.
High schools, colleges, summer schools, movie theaters, libraries and radios met many of the needs Chautauqua addressed, which brought about its decline.
Chautauqua went into receivership during the depression but was out of debt by 1936.
With the addition of the symphony orchestra in 1920 and a summer theater and professional ballet dance program, the institute started on the path of prosperity.
William Jennings Bryan and President Franklin Roosevelt, who gave his famous, “I Hate War” speech, were just some of the famous people who spoke from the Chautauqua Amphitheatre.
The Athenaeum Hotel, “The Grand Ole Dame,” is the first commercial building to have electricity in it. Thomas Edison used Chautauqua as a laboratory and the generator hut is still there today. Toothman said.
The Genealogical Society’s Oct. 14 meeting will feature Clay Kilgore from the Bradford House in Washington, who will speak on Native Americans of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The annual banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Nov. 11 at the Washington Street United Methodist Church. Tickets are $20 and are available at Cornerstone Genealogical Society, 144 E. Greene St., Waynesburg. For more information, call 724-627-5653.