THE FOUNDERS
EVERY idea which becomes a force in the world has its primal origin in a
living man or woman. It drops as a seed into one mind, grows up to
fruitage, and from one man is disseminated to a multitude. The
Chautauqua Idea became incarnate in two men, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis
Miller, and by their coordinated plans and labors made itself a mighty
power. Let us look at the lives of these two men, whose names are ever
one in the minds of intelligent Chautauquans.
John Heyl Vincent was of Huguenot ancestry. The family came from the
canton of Rochelle, a city which was the Protestant capital of France in
the period of the Reformation. From this vicinity Levi Vincent (born
1676), a staunch Protestant, emigrated to America in the persecuting
days of Louis XIV., and settled first at New Rochelle, N. Y., later
removed to New Jersey, and died there in 1736. For several generations
the family lived in New Jersey; but at the time of John Heyl Vincent's
birth on February 23, 1832, his father, John Himrod Vincent, the
great-great-grandson of the Huguenot refugee, was dwelling at
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Dr. Vincent used to say that he began his ministry
before he was six years old, preaching to the little negroes around his
home. The family moved during his early childhood to a farm near
Lewisburg, Pa., on Chillisquasque Creek, where at the age of fifteen he
taught in the public school.
When not much above sixteen he was licensed as a local preacher in the
Methodist Episcopal Church. He soon became a junior preacher on a four
weeks' circuit along the Lehigh River, which at that time seems to have
been in the bounds of the old Baltimore Conference. He rode his circuit
on horseback, with a pair of saddlebags behind him, and boarded 'round
among his parishioners. His saintly mother, of whose character and
influence he always spoke in the highest reverence, died at this time,
and soon after he went to visit relatives in Newark, N. J. There he
served as an assistant in the city mission, and at the same time studied
in the Wesleyan Academy on High Street. A fellow student, who became and
continued through a long life one of his most intimate friends, the Rev.
George H. Whitney, said that young Vincent differed from most of his
classmates in his eager desire for education, his appetite for
book-knowledge leading him to read almost every volume that came his
way, and his visions, then supposed to be mere dreams, of plans for the
intellectual uplift of humanity. It was his keenest sorrow that he could
not realize his intense yearning for a course in college; but perhaps
his loss in youth became a nation's gain in his maturer years.
In 1853 he was received formally as a member "on trial" in the New
Jersey Conference, at that time embracing the entire State. His first
charge as pastor was at North Belleville, later known as Franklin, now
Nutley, where a handsome new church bears his name and commemorates his
early ministry. His second charge was at a small suburb of Newark, then
called Camptown, now the thriving borough of Irvington. His ministry
from the beginning had been marked by an interest in childhood and
youth, and a strong effort to strengthen the work of the Sunday School.
At Camptown he established a definite course of Bible teaching for
teachers and young people. Near the church he staked out a map of
Palestine, marked its mountains and streams, its localities and
battlefields, and led his teachers and older scholars on pilgrimages
from Dan to Beersheba, pausing at each of the sacred places while a
member of the class told its story. The lessons of that Palestine
Class, taught on the peripatetic plan in the fifties, are still in
print, showing the requirements for each successive grade of Pilgrim,
Resident in Palestine, Dweller in Jerusalem, Explorer of other Bible
Lands, and after a final and searching examination, Templar, wearing a
gold medal. At each of his pastoral charges after this, he conducted his
Palestine Class and constructed his outdoor map of the Holy Land. May we
not find here the germ destined to grow into the Palestine Park of the
Chautauqua Assembly?
After four years in New Jersey young Vincent was transferred in 1857 to
Illinois, where in succession he had charge of four churches, beginning
with Joliet, where he met a young lady teacher, Miss Elizabeth
Dusenbury, of Portville, N. Y., who became his wife, and in the after
years by her warm heart, clear head, and wise judgment greatly
contributed to her husband's success. He was a year at Mount Morris, the
seat of the Rock River Conference Seminary, at which he studied while
pastor in the community. For two years, 1860 and '61, he was at Galena,
and found in his congregation a quiet ex-army officer, named Ulysses S.
Grant, who afterward said when introducing him to President Lincoln,
"Dr. Vincent was my pastor at Galena, Ill., and I do not think that I
missed one of his sermons while I lived there." Long after the Civil War
days Bishop Vincent expressed in some autobiographical notes his
estimate of General Grant. He wrote: "General Grant was one of the
loveliest and most reverent of men. He had a strong will under that army
overcoat of his, but he was the soul of honor and as reverent as he was
brave." After two years at Rockford--two years having been until 1864
the limit for a pastorate in American Methodism--in 1865 he was
appointed to Trinity Church, Chicago, then the most important church of
his denomination in that city.
Chicago opened the door of opportunity to a wider field. The pastor of
Trinity found in that city a group of young men, enthusiasts in the
Sunday School, and progressive in their aims. Dr. Vincent at once became
a leader among them and by their aid was able to introduce a Uniform
Lesson in the schools of the city. He established in 1865 a _Sunday
School Quarterly_, which in the following years became the _Sunday
School Teacher_, in its editorials and its lesson material setting a new
standard for Sunday School instruction. His abilities were soon
recognized by the authorities in his church, and he was called to New
York to become first General Agent of the Sunday School Union, the
organization directing Methodist Episcopal Sunday Schools throughout the
world, and in 1868, secretary and editor. He organized and set in
circulation the Berean Uniform Lessons for his denomination, an
important link in the chain of events which in 1873 made the Sunday
School lessons uniform throughout America and the world. It is the
fashion now to depreciate the Uniform Lesson Plan as unpedagogic and
unpsychologic; but its inauguration was the greatest forward step ever
taken in the evolution of the Sunday School; for it instituted
systematic study of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament; it
brought to the service of the teacher the ablest Bible scholars on both
sides of the Atlantic; it enabled the teachers of a school, a town, or a
city to unite in the preparation of their lessons. Chicago, New York,
Brooklyn, Boston, and many other places soon held study-classes of
Sunday School teachers, of all grades, of a thousand or more gathered on
a week-day to listen to the lectures of great instructors. The
Plainfield (N. J.) Railroad Class was not the only group of Sunday
School workers who spent their hour on the train passing to and from
business in studying together their Sunday School lesson.
[Illustration: Old Business Block and Post-Office]
Soon after Dr. Vincent assumed the charge of general Sunday School work,
having his office in New York, he took up his residence in
Plainfield, N. J., a suburban city which felt his influence and
responded to it for twenty years. Having led the way to one summit in
his ideals, he saw other mountain-heights beyond, and continually
pointed his followers upward. When he succeeded to the editorship of the
_Sunday School Journal_, the teachers' magazine of his church, he found
a circulation of about five thousand. With the Uniform Lesson, and his
inspiring editorials, it speedily rose to a hundred thousand, and a few
years later to two hundred thousand subscribers, while his lesson leaves
and quarterlies went into the millions. With voice--that wonderful,
awakening, thrilling voice--and with a pen on fire, he appealed
everywhere for a training that should fit Sunday School teachers for
their great work. He established in many places the Normal Class, and
marked out a course of instruction for its students. This was the step
which led directly to the _Chautauqua Assembly_, which indeed made some
such institution a necessity.
The Normal Class proposed a weekly meeting of Sunday School teachers or
of young people seeking preparation for teaching, a definite course of
study, examinations at regular stages, and a diploma to those who met
its standards. Dr. Vincent conceived the plan of bringing together a
large body of teacher-students, who should spend at least a fortnight in
daily study, morning and afternoon, and thus accomplish more work than
in six months of weekly meetings. He aimed also to have lectures on
inspiring themes, with a spice of entertainment to impart variety. While
this ideal was rising before him and shaping in his mind, he found a
kindred spirit, a genius in invention, and a practical, wise business
man whose name was destined to stand beside his own in equal honor
wherever and whenever Chautauqua is named--Lewis Miller of Akron, Ohio,
the first and until his death in 1899 the only president of Chautauqua.
Lewis Miller was born on July 24, 1829, at Greentown, Ohio. He received
in his childhood the limited education in "the three R's--reading,
'riting and 'rithmetic," usual in the country school; and at the age of
sixteen was himself a school teacher. In 1849, twenty years old, he
began work at the plastering trade, but at the same time was attending
school. He became a partner in the manufacturing firm of Aultman, Ball
and Co., which soon became Aultman, Miller and Co., and was removed from
Greentown to Canton, Ohio. Here, about 1857, Mr. Miller invented and put
into successful operation the Buckeye Mower and Reaper, which made him
famous, and with other inventions brought to him a fortune. His home was
for many years, and until his death, at Akron. From his earliest years
he was interested in education, and especially in education through the
Sunday School. He became Sunday School Superintendent of the First
Methodist Episcopal Church in Akron, and made it more than most of the
Sunday Schools in that generation a _school_, and not merely a meeting
for children. He organized a graded system and required his pupils to
pass from grade to grade through the door of an examination in Bible
knowledge. He was one of the earliest Sunday School superintendents to
organize a Normal Class for the equipment and training of young people
for teaching in his school. At a certain stage in the promotions every
young man and young woman passed one year or two years in the Normal
Grade; for which he arranged the course until one was provided by Dr.
Vincent after he became Secretary of Sunday School work for the
denomination in 1868; and in the planning of that early normal course,
Mr. Miller took an active part, for he met in John H. Vincent one who,
like himself, held inspiring ideals for the Sunday School, and the two
leaders were often in consultation. It was an epoch in the history of
the American Sunday School when Mr. Miller built the first Sunday
School hall in the land according to a plan originated by himself; its
architectural features being wrought out under his direction by his
fellow-townsman and friend, Mr. Jacob Snyder, an architect of
distinction. In this building, then unique but now followed by thousands
of churches, there was a domed central assembly hall, with rooms
radiating from it in two stories, capable of being open during the
general exercises, but closed in the lesson period so that each class
could be alone with its teacher while studying.
Mr. Miller was also interested in secular education, was for years
president of the Board of Education in Akron, always aiming for higher
standards in teaching. He was also a trustee of Mount Union College in
his own State. Two men such as Vincent and Miller, both men of vision,
both leaders in education through the Sunday School, both aiming to make
that institution more efficient, would inevitably come together; and it
was fortunate that they were able to work hand in hand, each helping the
other.
These two men had thoughts of gatherings of Sunday School workers, not
in conventions, to hear reports and listen to speeches, not to go for
one-day or two- or three-day institutes, but to spend weeks together in
studying the Bible and methods of Sunday School work. They talked over
their plans, and they found that while they had much in common in their
conception each one could supplement the other in some of the details.
It had been Dr. Vincent's purpose to hold his gathering of Sunday School
workers and Bible students within the walls of a large church, in some
city centrally located and easily reached by railroad. He suggested to
Mr. Miller that his new Sunday School building, with its many classrooms
opening into one large assembly hall, would be a suitable place for
launching the new enterprise.
One cannot help asking the question--what would have been the result if
Dr. Vincent's proposal had been accepted, and the first Sunday School
Assembly had been held in a city and a church? Surely the word
"Chautauqua" would never have appeared as the name of a new and mighty
movement in education. Moreover, it is almost certain that the movement
itself would never have arisen to prominence and to power. It is a
noteworthy fact that no Chautauqua Assembly has ever succeeded, though
often attempted, in or near a large city. One of the most striking and
drawing features of the Chautauqua movement has been its out-of-doors
and in-the-woods habitat. The two founders did not dream in those days
of decision that the fate of a great educational system was hanging in
the balance.
An inspiration came to Lewis Miller to hold the projected series of
meetings in a forest, and under the tents of a camp meeting. Camp
meetings had been held in the United States since 1799, when the first
gathering of this name took place in a grove on the banks of the Red
River in Kentucky led by two brothers McGee, one a Presbyterian, the
other a Methodist. In those years churches were few and far apart
through the hamlets and villages of the west and south. The camp meeting
brought together great gatherings of people who for a week or more
listened to sermons, held almost continuous prayer meetings, and called
sinners to repentance. The interest died down somewhat in the middle of
the nineteenth century, but following the Civil War, a wave of
enthusiasm for camp meetings swept over the land. In hundreds of groves,
east and west, land was purchased or leased, lots were sold, tents were
pitched, and people by the thousand gathered for soul-stirring services.
In one of the oldest and most successful of these camp meetings, that on
Martha's Vineyard, tents had largely given place to houses, and a city
had arisen in the forest. This example had been followed, and on many
camp-meeting grounds houses of a primitive sort straggled around the
open circle where the preaching services were held. Most of these
buildings were mere sheds, destitute of architectural beauty, and
innocent even of paint on their walls of rough boards. Many of these
antique structures may still be seen at Chautauqua, survivals of the
camp-meeting period, in glaring contrast with the more modern summer
homes beside them.
At first Dr. Vincent did not take kindly to the thought of holding his
training classes and their accompaniments in any relationship to a camp
meeting or even upon a camp ground. He was not in sympathy with the type
of religious life manifested and promoted at these gatherings. The fact
that they dwelt too deeply in the realm of emotion and excitement, that
they stirred the feelings to the neglect of the reasoning and thinking
faculties, that the crowd called together on a camp-meeting ground would
not represent the sober, sane, thoughtful element of church life--all
these repelled Dr. Vincent from the camp meeting.
Mr. Miller had recently become one of the trustees of a camp meeting
held at Fair Point on Lake Chautauqua, and proposed that Dr. Vincent
should visit the place with him. Somewhat unwillingly, yet with an open
mind, Vincent rode with Miller by train to Lakewood near the foot of the
lake, and then in a small steamer sailed to Fair Point. A small boy was
with them, sitting in the prow of the boat, and as it touched the wharf
he was the first of its passengers to leap on the land--and in after
years, George Edgar Vincent, LL.D., was wont to claim that he, at the
mature age of nine years, was the original discoverer of Chautauqua!
[Illustration: Old Amphitheater]
[Illustration: Old Auditorium in Miller Park]
It was in the summer of 1873, soon after the fourth session of the Erie
Conference Camp Meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that Dr.
Vincent came, saw, and was conquered. His normal class and its
subsidiary lectures and entertainments should be held under the beeches,
oaks, and maples shading the terraced slopes rising up from Lake
Chautauqua.
A lady who had attended the camp meeting in 1871, its second session
upon the grounds at Fair Point, afterward wrote her first impressions of
the place. She said that the superintendent of the grounds, Mr. Pratt
(from whom an avenue at Chautauqua received its name some years
afterward), told her that until May, 1870, "the sound of an axe had not
been heard in those woods." This lady (Mrs. Kate P. Bruch) wrote:
Many of the trees were immense in size, and in all
directions, from the small space occupied by those
who were tenting there, we could walk through seas
of nodding ferns; while everywhere through the
forest was a profusion of wild flowers, creeping
vines, murmuring pine, beautiful mosses and
lichens. The lake itself delighted us with its
lovely shores; where either highly cultivated
lands dotted with farmhouses, or stretches of pine
forest, met on all sides the cool, clear water
that sparkled or danced in the sunlight, or gave
subdued but beautiful reflection of the moonlight.
We were especially charmed with the narrow,
tortuous outlet of the lake--then so closely
resembling the streams of tropical climes. With
the trees pressing closely to the water's edge,
covered with rich foliage, tangled vines clinging
and swaying from their branches; and luxuriant
undergrowth, through which the bright cardinal
flowers were shining, it was not difficult to
fancy one's self far from our northern clime,
sailing over water that never felt the cold clasp
of frost and snow.
The steamers winding their way through the romantic outlet were soon to
be laden with new throngs looking for the first time upon forest, farms,
and lake. Those ivy-covered and moss-grown terraces of Fair Point were
soon to be trodden by the feet of multitudes; and that camp-meeting
stand from which fervent appeals to repentance had sounded forth, to
meet responses of raptured shouts from saints, and cries for mercy from
seekers, was soon to become the arena for religious thought and
aspiration of types contrasted with those of the camp meeting of former
years.