Elizabeth Stanton
Julia Ward Howe
Paulina K. Davis
Digital Bibliography
Chronology

What started as a gathering of intellectuals for discussion of current events and politics and philosophy in the 1700's and early 1800's, in the United States, grew into a thrust for education, culture and entertainment. Josiah Holbrook, a traveling lecturer on science and technology, formed an industrial and agricultural school for young men in 1826.Holbrook called it the Millsbury Branch, Number 1, of the American Lyceum. The school, and soon others, became a forum of discussion for organized public speaking and opinion. This movement grew in popularity until by 1840 there were over 137 separate National American Lyceum locations.

Holbrook's vision of a weekly 'study group' to promote education, libraries, museums, and culture evolved and spread. This was the forerunner of what would become a platform of debate, opinion, education and entertainment to be called the Chautauqua Circuit in the late 1800's into the early part of the 1900's.

Speakers addressed more than current events or differences in philosophies. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 stimulated numerous advocates for and against slavery and other so called 'illnesses of society'. The growth of the railroad and the opening of the Erie Canal increased the demand for ideas and personalities from the East. Lecturers were willing to travel to make a living if they had a paying audience. One report alleges that Ralph Waldo Emerson requested only five dollars and oats for his horse and for that price he would voice his opinion, advise, and enlightenment.

The Lyceum Circuit heard voices for and against political leanings of state and national interest. Bronson Alcott was an educator, philosopher, and abolitionist as well as leading proponent of transcendentalism and spoke frequently at these gatherings. Henry Ward Beecher, a clergyman, temperance advocate and abolitionist was a familiar and strident voice on the pre-Civil War lecture circuit. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Thoreau, Horace Greeley, and even a young Abraham Lincoln traveled the Lyceum.

Ardent abolitionist James Redpath formed a booking agency in 1868 with the Boston Lyceum Bureau. Later this became known as the Redpath Bureau. Political events and social upheavals were dramatically altering the social face of the United States. Orators cajoled, persuaded, and entertained. In 1874, in northwest New York State a new form of performance delivery was beginning. Chautauqua, New York was the site for a summer camp for Sunday school teachers. Lewis Miller and John Vincent coordinated Methodist Sunday schools along the Chautauqua format throughout the United States. Conversations, readings, and educational ideas gave way to examples of poetry discourse, art discussion, classes on religion, musical interludes, and humor. Chautauqua became popular in towns of the newly developing and expanding United States craving culture, knowledge, political debate and new ideas. Chautauqua quickly developed into a unique venue for education, arts, sciences, politics and reform.

As the discussion of abolition and 'rights' and philosophy and religion and temperance grew in volume the etiquette and standards of the times opened the door for the opinion and thoughts and education of women. Society frowned on 'womens rights' even more so than the emerging argument over slavery. Three female voices emerged from this time as determined advocates of a new revolutionary opinion---women should be educated, treated as equals and (shock of all shocks) allowed to vote. This site highlights the accomplishments of these three women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe and Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis paved the way for a revolution still not entirely resolved today; the 'rights' of women.

Almost as if there was a symbolic connection to the vivacious energy of social reformers like Davis, Stanton and Howe the Chautauqua Circuit gradually faded, giving way to radio and cinema. By 1932, one hundred and one years from the inception of the first Lyceums, the Circuit Chautauqua had become relegated to history.