The Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting and the Chautauqua Institution Leslie Allen Buhite
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 The Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting and the Chautauqua Institution Leslie Allen Buhite Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE & DANCE THE CHAUTAUQUA LAKE CAMP MEETING AND THE CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION By LESLIE ALLEN BUHITE A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007 The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Leslie Allen Buhite defended on April 17, 2007. Carrie Sandahl Professor Directing Dissertation Donna Marie Nudd Outside Committee Member Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member Approved: C. Cameron Jackson, Director, School of Theatre Sally E. McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre & Dance The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved of the above named committee members. ii For Michelle and Ashera Donald and Nancy Mudge Harold and Ruth Buhite As a foundation left to create the spiral aim A Movement regained and regarded both the same All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you -- Jon Anderson iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My very special thanks and profound gratitude to Dr. Carrie Sandahl, whose unrelenting support and encouragement in the face of my procrastination and truculence made this document possible. My thanks and gratitude also to committee members Dr. Donna Marie Nudd and Dr. Mary Karen Dahl for their patient reading and kind and insightful criticism. Of my acquaintances at Florida State University, I also extend my appreciation to Dr. Laura Edmondson for her efforts and engaging conversations, to Dr. Anita Gonzalez and Xochi for their friendship to my family and me, and to Dr. Joe Karioth for his mentoring and many free lunches. This dissertation was prompted in part from the alternative Chautauqua history I first discovered in Norton Hall at Chautauqua Institution. For that enter- taining record I am indebted to the institutional memory of IATSE Local #266, and to the specific recollections of Ed Mifsud, Jack Sherwood, John and Bill Samuelson, and others of a certain generation. Also at Chautauqua, my thanks to Jay Lesenger and Marty Merkly for obliging my many impertinent requests, and to Chez Robert for small favors and great friendship. A second inspiration for tracing an alternative history of Chautauqua grew from the work of Dr. Leonard Faulk, whose historical research on Rev. James Townsend revealed to me the first of many great holes in the received history of The Institution. My thanks to Len and other members of the Unitarian- Universalist Congregation of Jamestown for their continued interest and support. Of these, my special thanks also to Ms. B. Dolores Thompson, whose history of Chautauqua County was very influential in shaping this project in its earliest conceptions. For conversation, information, and many obscure references on the holi- ness movement I extend my appreciation to Dr. Kenneth O. Brown, and to Mr. Norman P. Carlson for sharing his social history of the exalted Chautauqua Lake. iv I am indebted to the Prendergast Library in Jamestown for my use and abuse of the microfilm archives, the book collection, and occasionally the staff. I am also deeply indebted to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford for enabling my research in its final stages, and especially to Dr. Bridgett Passauer for her encouragement and commiseration. Also at Pitt-Bradford, my thanks to the Han- ley Library staff for facilitating my odd and extensive interlibrary loan requests and many gentle reminders to return overdue books. And, as many before me have discovered, there is no other description for the staff at the Oliver Archives Center at Chautauqua than “delightful.” My particular thanks for their advice and for supplying several historic documents. My appreciation for generous encouragement and the occasional kick in the pants to Carl Seiple (and of course Joanne), my curious-but-patient siblings, and father Harold. Thanks also to Fred J. Behrendt for advice and assistance on the final formatting process as well as his decades of friendship, and to the Divine Michelle for chasing out truckloads of typos, misplaced words, wandering verb tenses and many an [ ; of for the .”.).). And for putting up with this very long process. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES Page vii ABSTRACT Page ix7 INTRODUCTION: The Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting and The Chautauqua Institution Page 1 Precis Page 3 Existing Scholarship and Resources Page 12 Personal Musings Page 18 Theoretical Musings Page 19 Chapter by Chapter Page 24 Summation Page 27 CHAPTER 1: The Pennsylvania Oil District and The Chautauqua Region Page 29 Oil and Water Page 29 Petrolia Page 32 Oil Fever Page 34 Gender Page 37 Tourists and Voyeurs Page 44 The Chautauqua Lake Region Page 46 Rhetoric and Reality Page 52 Suburban Development Page 57 Gender II Page 63 Heterotopium Chautauquans Page 67 CHAPTER 2: The Evolution of Camp Meetings Page 74 Space and Behavior Page 82 Gender Performance: Women Page 88 Gender Performance: Men Page 94 The Refinement of Behaviors Page 97 Salvation and Beyond Page 105 Embourgeoisement Page 109 CHAPTER 3: The Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting Page 112 Genesis Page 115 Reportage Page 117 Salvation and Sanctification at Chautauqua Page 120 Gender Page 123 Physical Improvements Page 127 Evocation Page 130 Summation Page 134 vi CHAPTER 4. The Fair Point Sunday School Assembly Page 140 “Not a Camp Meeting!” Page 141 Some Comparisons with Camp Meetings Page 147 The Chautauqua Movement Page 158 Summation Page 170 CONCLUSION Page 172 Revelation Page 176 For Further Study Page 178 Twilight Page 180 APPENDICES Appendix A: Methodist Denominations Page 182 Appendix B: “The Highest Navigable Water on the Globe” Page 184 Appendix C: The 1873 National Guard Encampment on Chautauqua Lake Page 186 Appendix D: Appalachian Plain-Folk Culture Page 188 Appendix E: CLCM Lease-holders – Notes and Commentary Page 189 Appendix F: The Chautauqua Movement Page 191 Appendix G: Permission Page 193 NOTES Page 194 WORKS CITED Page 230 NEWSPAPER REFERENCES,CITATIONS, NOTES AND COMMENTARIES Page 239 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Page 251 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE I: Regional map of Chautauqua and Petrolia Page 48 FIGURE II: The Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting Auditorium Page 84 FIGURE III: Plan of the Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting Grounds Page 126 viii ABSTRACT This multidisciplinary dissertation progresses on several levels. The first cause is to examine the brief history of the Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting (1871-1875), a religious organization preceding the Chautauqua Institution at its site on Chautauqua Lake in western New York, and trace its organizational and social transition from a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting into the world famous “American Institution.” To accomplish this the Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting is situated in its historical, regional, and national context in the 1870s, before narrowing the survey to the more immediate social milieu of Chautauqua County, New York, in that era. The contextualization will specifically consider the Chautauqua region’s relationship with the nearby oil-producing district of Pennsylvania, which is revealed to be both a social foil and an economic resource that enabled the development of religious and social tourism on Chautauqua Lake. A second level of contextualization will consider the evolution of the individual and group performance of evangelical Protestant religiosity across the nineteenth century, from the spectacular behaviors seen at early camp meetings in the trans-Appalachian American Southeast to the more refined behaviors at great holiness meetings in the North to the discrete performances that characterized behaviors within the Chautauqua Move- ment. ix INTRODUCTION: THE CHAUTAUQUA LAKE CAMP MEETING AND THE CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION “That man who is speaking is Dr. Vincent. Hasn’t he a ringing voice? It reminds me of a trumpet. He likes to use it, I know he does; he has learned to manage it so nicely, and with an eye to the effect. You will hear his voice often enough, and you just watch and see if you don’t learn the first echo of it from any other.” “Perhaps he won’t be here all the time to use his voice,” whispered back Flossy, without much idea of what she was saying. The novelty of the scene had stolen her senses. Marion laughed softly. “You blessed little idiot!” she said, “don’t you know he manufactured Chautauqua, root and branch? Or if he didn’t quite manufacture the trees he looked after their growth, I dare say. Why, this meeting is his darling, his idol, his best beloved. ‘Hear him speak?’ I guess you will. I should like to see a meeting of this kind that didn’t hear from him. It will have to be when he is out of the body.” -- Isabella Alden Four Girls at Chautauqua Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents and packing their lunch-baskets for their camp meeting grounds … Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent, the silver-tongued trumpet of Sabbath Schoolism, is marshalling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the five thousand sat down on the grass and had a surplus of 1 2 provisions to take home to those who were too stupid to go. From the arrangements being made for that August meeting, we judge there will be so much concentrated enthusiasm that there may be danger that some morning, as the sun strikes gloriously through the ascending mist of Chautauqua Lake, our friends may all go up in a chariot of fire, leaving our Sunday-Schools in a bereft condition… Why not have all our churches and denominations take a summer airing? The breath of the pine woods or a whistle with the waters would put an end to everything like morbid religion.