Who's Who in Chautauqua History

By Jeffrey Scott Maxwell

The people who find their way onto this list are significant to the complete history of Chautauqua in the opinion of The Complete Chautuquan, and the list is admittedly subjective.  TCC is willing to hear any suggestions to add individuals, but the decision to place someone on this list is completely the decision of The Complete Chautauquan. 

The list is divided into what The Complete Chautauquan sees as the significant areas of Chautauqua history: The Chautauqua Institution, The Independent Chautauquas, The Circuit Chautauquas, and The Modern Chautauqua Movement.  Now here is the list:

This section also includes the significant people in the outreach programs of the Chautauqua Institution, including the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Institute (CLSC) and other wide-reaching programs.

Vincent, John Heyle -- Methodist preacher and bishop; founder of the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.  The following article, written when he was 80 years old, gives an idea of the work and person of Vincent.

BISHOP JOHN H. VINCENT was eighty years old on the 23d day of February [1912].  Of northern parentage, though born in Alabama, the future founder of Chautauqua was educated in Pennsylvania and began his career as teacher in that State the method of his teaching changed later, but he has always been a teacher.  As a young Methodist preacher he enlivened his lonely circuit rides with the company of books, and, like Wesley, was a devout student as well as an ardent preacher.  He happily combined breadth of view and sympathy with intensity of conviction, and he has a singularly fresh mind.  When he began his Palestine Study Class in Rockford, Illinois, he led the way in vitalizing and modernizing conventional methods of Bible study.

It was not long before Mr. Vincent was leading a movement for better Sunday-school work as broad as the Methodist Church.  Bishop Vincent became a preacher without a college education, at eighteen.  But he was a student, and his energy and intelligence enabled him to secure for himself what circumstances refused to give him.  He was also a student of life; and wherever he went, young as he was, his interest in the vital conditions of the people about him and their spiritual prosperity brought him friendship and confidence, and experience taught him to be a wise adviser.  He was from the beginning a successful preacher, though he had only three parishes.  His temperament, his personality, and his gifts marked him for a wider career.  In the course of his ministry he saw many Sunday-schools, and was impressed by the lack method and of freshness of teaching, which made too many schools unfruitful both of intelligence and of character.  He began to feel his own responsibility in the situation, and seriously to ask himself the question how to secure a higher grade of teachers by raising the standards for teaching; how to substitute better ideals for those which were in vogue.

Nor could so vital an impulse be kept within denominational limits; catholicity and ability mad eBishop Vincent a leader, and the International Sunday-School Lesson system was not only a long step of advance in the method of teaching , but in the ripening of the faintly stirring feeling for Christian unity.  He is a man of deep human sympathy and of democratic instincts, and he felt more and more the need of educational opportunity for the multitude who has missed or were missing the means of regular education, and his mind and heart.  The combination of Bishop Vincent’s vision and Mr. Lewis Miller’s practical ability made the great popular school on Chautauqua Lake a feature of the life of the time, and opened inspiring possibilities of self-education to the country.  The school has become a National institution, and those who sneer at it show a really pitiful ignorance of what it has meant to a host of people.  A distinguished Oxford teacher who happened to be present on a graduation day took off his hat as the procession passed.  "In my stupid ignorance," he said to a friend who was with him "I used to jeer at Chautauqua; but now that I have learned what it is and means, I take my hat off to it."  The whole world has become interested in Chautauqua, and Bishop Vincent’s vision has opened the door of knowledge to multitudes.  "Self-improvement in all our faculties, for us all, through all time, for the greatest good of all people – this is the Chautauqua idea, a divine idea, a democratic idea, a people’s idea, a progressive idea, a millennial idea."  Preacher, teacher, liberator, prophet, Bishop Vincent has sowed the seed of knowledge over a wide field, with a tireless hand, and is now reaping a harvest of affection and honor.
 
 

Bingham, Ralph S. -- Comic entertainer and president of the International Lyceum Association.  Very influential in the formation of public thought in the lyceum and chautauqua talent bureaus.

Harrison, Harry P. -- Beginning in 1904, platform manager for the Standard Chautauqua Bureau, later called the Redpath-Vawter Chautauqua Bureau; put together the first Redpath Circuit; wrote a significant book on circuit chautauqua.

McLaren, 

Pearson, Paul M. -- President of the Swarthmore Chautauqua Association and president of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. 

Redpath, James (18??-18??) -- Abolitionist, reporter, Editor (published in 1850s under the pseudonym of John Ball, Jr. and Jacobius), United States Civil War correspondant, biographer, and lecturer; founder of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, later the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, which became the most significant talent supplier to both the permanent chautauquas and the circuits.

James Redpath LINKS to other sites:
1888 article from Prominent Men and Women of the Day
The American Experience: People & Events: John Brown's Holy War
Redpath Speakers Bureau
Mark Twain's 1871-72 Lecture Tour Organized by Redpath
The Lyceum Movement: A Revolution in American Education