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Birdseye View of Pacific Grove | City Departments | Chautauqua
Early Businesses | The Faces of Chinatown | Feast of Lanterns
Growing up in the Grove | Grand Army of the Republic | Gardens in the Grove
Hazards of the Rocky Shores | A City of Homes | Hopkins Seaside Laboratory
Mammoth Stables & Horses | Hotel to Holman's | Lovers Point
RLS' Old Pacific Capital Quote | Pacific Grove People
The First Pledge of Allegiance | Pacific Grove on Track | C.K. Tuttle


Left: display of Chautauqua-related items, including Pacific Grove's Chautauqua banner, an original CLSC diploma,
a portrait of Mary E.B. Norton, and the Chautauqua library card catalog (from the Museum's collection). Storefronts were created
by Snick Farkas for the exhibit. Right: replica Chautauqua residential tent created for the exhibit by Steve Honegger.
The frame is made from original wood from Chautauqua Hall, removed during the 2005 renovation.

Chautauqua's Beginnings
The first Chautauqua assembly was held near Lake Chautauqua, in southwestern New York State, and was conceived as a training center for Methodist Sunday school teachers. Founded by Dr. John Heyle Vincent (a Methodist minister from New Jersey) and Lewis Miller (an inventor and businessmen from Ohio), the summer school shared common space with religious camp-meeting grounds. Both founders took pains to assure that the assembly was not confused with the religious camp meeting, which they abhorred. The very first Chautauqua assembly was held on August 4, 1874.

In 1878, Dr. Vincent further refined his vision, and created the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. The CLSC (often parodied as "Come, Love, Sit Closer") was a four-year course of required readings in various subjects, ranging from science and art to Bible studies. After the participants completed their courses and passed written exams, they received diplomas-for many participants, the only opportunity for higher education in the days before community colleges and universities reached areas outside of large population centers.

This mother assembly flourished, and, to satisfy a growing demand for the Chautauqua experience, many more offshoot assemblies were created across America-often in wooded sites adjacent to bodies of water. The Chautauqua Movement was a truly American invention that still exists today. The women's movement had its inception at a Chautauqua assembly, where the temperance organization WCTU was created.
Chautauqua in Pacific Grove
In 1879, the first Pacific Coast assembly was held in Pacific Grove. Like the mother assembly, the founders recognized a perfect setting in the existing camp meeting grounds. The Pacific Grove Retreat Association had been established in 1875 by a group of Methodist ministers meeting in San Francisco. They selected the site currently occupied by Jewell Park for their camp meeting ground. In 1881, the Pacific Improvement Company (predecessor of the Pebble Beach Company) provided the large wooden hall-now known as Chautauqua Hall-that served a variety of uses, including a CLSC classroom.


The reverend's pavilion erected in Jewell Park during the seasonal Methodist retreats that began in 1875.
Two of the early organizers and teachers of the Pacific Coast Branch of the CLSC, Mary E.B. Norton, a botany instructor at San Jose Normal School (now San Jose State University), and Professor Josiah Keep, a conchologist from Mills College, were instrumental in the founding of a Chautauqua Museum.


Mary E.B. Norton, the Museum's first curator. From the Museum's collection.
In 1883, the Pacific Improvement Company provided a small octagonal building to hold the growing collection of specimens and books. Under the curatorship of Miss Norton, this small museum grew. By 1900, the old museum organization was dissolved and the Pacific Grove Museum Association was incorporated. This same octagonal building was in use until the present Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History was constructed in 1932.


The Pacific Grove Museum octagonal building, from Central Avenue (formerly called Grove). Men are playing croquet to
the right of the building. c.1900. Image #17.1-547-BP from the PGMNH's Tuttle Collection.
As the 20th century dawned, Chautauqua assemblies continued in Pacific Grove. But attendance dwindled, and in 1905 members of the Pacific Chautauqua Alumni Association, with the help of the Pacific Grove Board of Trade, launched the first Feast of Lanterns to celebrate the close of the assembly. A similar end-of-season event was held at the New York assembly every July 4th. The first Feast of Lanterns in Pacific Grove was held at Lovers Point on July 22, 1905, and was a huge success. That year, the local Chinese community lent an air of authenticity with their fleet of lantern-lit boats. By 1906, their village had been destroyed by fire.
In 1889, the Pacific Improvement Company donated land on Lighthouse Avenue where the newly built grand-spired Methodist Episcopal Assembly Hall stood. Many of the CLSC classes were held in this building.


Assembly Hall of the First Methodist Church, which was located on Lighthouse Avenue between 17th & 18th streets.
September 16, 1907 (Monday). Image #16.3-544-BP from the PGMNH's Tuttle Collection.
The original Chautauqua banner, with its hand-painted metaphorical motif of one hand passing a torch to another, was displayed in ceremonies at the church, and it can be seen to the right on the stage in the image (below) by photographer C.K. Tuttle.


Interior of the Assembly Hall, showing the Chautauqua banner to the right.
c. 1900. Image #16.3-542-BP from the PGMNH's Tuttle Collection.
While the Chautauqua movement has remained a vital cultural force in other parts of the country, the Pacific Grove assembly declined in the early 20th century. The advent of radio and movies, coupled with increasing opportunities for more conventional college education, marked the end of the Chautauqua assembly here. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in 1926 the last Chautauqua assembly was held in Pacific Grove, and the Grove Theatre opened on Lighthouse Avenue.
Pacific Grove's Chautauqua Banner
The original Chautauqua banner is one of Pacific Grove's most treasured symbols of its past. The very fabric of the community's heritage is woven into the banner's purple and green-gold satin. The banner was created for the annual Chautauqua assemblies that were held in the Grove beginning in 1879.



The original Pacific Grove Chautauqua banner, before restoration.
Since the demise of the Pacific Grove Chautauqua, the two-sided banner used during assembly ceremonies has been under the stewardship of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Time and the elements had caused it to deteriorate, and in 2004 it was professionally conserved by Margaret E. Geiss-Mooney. The fragile and irreplaceable nature of this artifact dictates that stringent conservation measures be followed. Because these conservation constraints limit the banner's display to optimal conditions precludes protracted exposure--Ms. Mooney created a duplicate banner, in materials similar to the original.
Chautauqua Performers
The Pacific Coast Chautauqua was remarkable for its range and scope of orations, musical performances, literary appreciations, teachers' instruction, scientific explorations, art classes, and Bible studies. Eminent scholars like Mills College's Professor Josiah Keep lectured on conchology, and numerous other distinguished experts were attracted to the assemblies. The handful of highlighted Chautauqua performers here gives just a hint of the myriad opportunities afforded by the annual assemblies and the reading circles.

Kate Douglas Wiggin was born in Philadelphia, and came to California in 1872 to teach. Six years later, she founded the first free kindergarten on the west coast in San Francisco, and two years after that she established a kindergarten training school.

She was also a writer, perhaps most famous for her Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Her first story, The Birds' Christmas Carol, was published in 1887. She also wrote Mother Carey's Chickens.

She appeared at the 1886 Pacific Grove Assembly, and gave daily classes in kindergarten teaching.

Susan B. Anthony was an internationally recognized activist who dedicated her life to woman suffrage.

Born in Adams, Massachusetts to a Quaker family, she became a teacher in her early adulthood. But her sense of justice and moral zeal inspired her trailblazing involvement in numerous causes, including the abolition of slavery; educational reform and coeducation; labor reform and equal pay for equal work; trade unionism; temperance; women's property rights; and votes for women.

Though she never lived to see American women given the right to vote, she was instrumental in the eventual passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

She appeared on Woman's Day at the 1896 Pacific Grove Assembly to plead the cause of suffrage.


Left: "Don't Shoot" (1896). Right: "The Enemies of the Republic" (1895).
Both reproduced from Fifty Great Cartoons (Chicago: The Ram's Horn Press, 1899)
and available online at: http://history.osu.edu/ Projects/Rams_Horn.
Courtesy of the Department of History, Ohio State University.

Frank Beard was the chief illustrator of the social gospel magazine, The Ram's Horn, published in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also illustrated books and contributed to other journals, including Harper's Weekly and Leslie's Weekly. He was famous for his "Chalk Talks," where he would illustrate his lectures with on-the-spot drawings.

He was staunchly anti-alcohol, and his many prohibition cartoons served as powerful propaganda against saloons and the liquor traffic.

He appeared at the 1899 Pacific Grove Assembly.

Charles Carter was born in San Francisco, and was a prominent lawyer and journalist. He traveled the Chautauqua circuit in America, but earned his great fame as Carter the Great when he took his illusionist magic to Europe.

He appeared at the 1905 Pacific Grove Assembly. One of the local papers reported that, "he delighted and mystified the audience by performing many amusing and seemingly impossible tricks. "

While performing his cabinet trick, he was assisted by professors John Ivey, Josiah Keep, and other staid CLSC lecturers, who bound the magician's hands to a chair and witnessed firsthand his astonishing feat of donning professor Ivey's coat.


Charles Kellogg poses with the Redwood log that was transformed into his Travel Log.


Kellogg with the completed motor home at his Morgan Hills home. Both images from the Humboldt
Redwoods State Park website: http://www.humboldtredwoods.org/kellogglog.htm

Charles Kellogg was born near Susanville, California, and developed a love for nature at an early age. He developed his gift of mimicking bird songs as a child, and took his act on the road with various Chautauqua and vaudeville circuits.

Known as the "California Nature Singer," his vocal range was amazing, and reportedly extended over 12-1/2 octaves. He claimed to be able to extinguish a flame with his voice. He also claimed to have been born with a syrinx, the vocal organ of a bird, as well as a human larynx.

Kellogg built what may well be the first modern motor home (made from a section of a Redwood tree from Humboldt County fused onto a Nash Quad chassis). He drove this amazing vehicle, which he dubbed the "Travel Log," across the United States during WWI to promote Liberty Bonds, and then continued to travel promoting Redwood conservation. The truck is now on public display at the Humboldt Redwood Interpretive Association Visitor Center at Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

He appeared at the 1914 Pacific Grove Assembly.

Thanks to Evelyn M. and William T. Butner for information derived from their treatise, The Chautauqua Connection (The Heritage Society: 1980).
Page created August 24, 2005. Last updated September 9, 2005.
Page copyright 2005 by the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.