It was in 1874 when Methodist preacher John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller launched week-long Christian revival camps along the western shore of Lake Chautauqua in western New York state.  Within a decade, this movement of “education and uplift” spread throughout much of rural and small-town America.By bringing a variety of secular programs--re-enactors of famed personalities as well as plays and music--onto the Chautauqua stage, the organizers greatly broadened the events’ appeal.

When it became too expensive and inefficient for communities far apart from each other to assemble their own Chautauqua casts, touring companies filled the demand with attractive multi-day programs and popular performers. By 1900, the first traveling Chautauquas appeared and rapidly expanded to 21 troupes which operated on 93 circuits and reached some 35 million Americans a year.

Some politicians and social activists were quick to use the Chautauqua as a ready-made forum in which to address and influence the common folks that flocked there to learn and be entertained.  Teddy Roosevelt loved to appear in Chautauquas.  He called them the “most American thing in America.”  William Jennings Bryan became one of the most sought-after Chautauqua attractions.  No wonder he called the Chautauqua a “potent factor in molding the mind of the nation.”

With the coming of the Great Depression and the wide availability of radio and film by 1930, however, people began spending their summers more at home and in movie theaters than under and around the big Chautauqua tents in campgrounds and parks.  “By 1934 the tattered, big brown Chautauqua tents were folded, stored for the last time,” so a historian reports.

For the people of Morgan County in Illinois, however, it was not the end.  Here and in several other states and communities it took until the 1980s before somebody came along to revive this home-grown American tradition.

In Missouri and Illinois, the humanities councils took the initiative by annually helping three communities in each state to organize and finance the comeback of the Chautauqua.  In 1999 and 2002, the Morgan County Historical Society was chosen to provide the facilities and the music for a Chautauqua troupe from Missouri to stage five-day shows under the theme “Inside the Civil War” and “The Jazz Age.”

In 2000 and 2001, the Morgan County Historical Society planned and staged its own Chautauquas and has done so every year since 2004.  Chautauqua fans have been flocking from all over Illinois and from as far as Ohio and Nebraska whenever the big tent rose again in Jacksonville’s Community Park.

In the meantime, the Illinois Humanities Council has lost interest in Chautauquas and now focuses primarily on projects in Chicago and Champaign, as well as on projects supporting the interests of preferred minorities.  Aside from Jacksonville, no other community in Illinois is presently offering a clearly focused annual four-day Chautauqua.  Under its big 40 ft. by 80 ft. tent, it has regularly attracted annual audiences of over 2,000.

From its inception, Jacksonville’s Prairieland Chautauqua has been offered to the public as an educational service free of charge.  Just like public schools, the learning experiences Chautauquas provide are to be open to all people regardless of ability to pay.

That, however, places a heavy fund-raising burden on the organizers.  Professional and semiprofessional re-enactors of historical personalities command honoraria from $400 up to several thousand dollars, depending upon demand.  A four-day rental of a 40 ft. by 80 ft. tent with a stage and all-around lights now runs $2,500 while sound and lighting experts cost at least $1,200.

Given the traditional American reliance upon private enterprise and private philanthropy, largely government-financed agencies, such as the humanities and arts councils, cannot be expected to provide more than seed money for continuing cultural projects.  Hence, reliable funding has to be found in the private sector if Chautauquas are to be a regular feature of the community’s calendar of events.

If you wonder whether the Prairieland Chautauqua--now in its 12th year--is worth the effort and money spent on it, consider the colorful diversity of the ten themes it has been able to stage on its own: “Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825 to 2000,” “American Humor,” “American Women,” “Westward Bound: The Lewis and Clark Expedition,” “Pioneering Educators in Central Illinois,” “Movers and Shakers in Illinois,” “Voices for Freedom and Justice,” “The Age of Lincoln,” “Pioneers of Science and Invention,” and  “American Originals.”