During the American Revolution, the Seneca tribe of Indians, who had
espoused the British side, established villages at Bemus and Griffiths
points on Lake Chautauqua; and a famous British regiment, "The King's
Eighth," still on the rolls of the British army, passed down the lake,
and encamped for a time beside the Outlet within the present limits of
Jamestown. Thus the redskin, the voyageur, and the redcoat in turn
dipped their paddles into the placid waters of Lake Chautauqua. They all
passed away, and the American frontiersman took their place; he too was
followed by the farmer and the vinedresser. In the last half of the
nineteenth century a thriving town, Mayville, was growing at the
northern end of the lake; the city of Jamestown was rising at the end of
the Outlet; while here and there along the shores were villages and
hamlets; roads, such as they were before the automobile compelled their
improvement, threaded the forests and fields. A region situated on the
direct line of travel between the east and the west, and also having
Buffalo on the north and Pittsburgh on the south, could not long remain
secluded. Soon the whistle of the locomotive began to wake the echoes of
the surrounding hills.
In its general direction the lake lies southeast and northwest, and its
widest part is about three miles south of Mayville. Here on its
northwestern shore a wide peninsula reaches forth into the water. At the
point it is a level plain, covered with stately trees; on the land side
it rises in a series of natural terraces marking the altitude and extent
of the lake in prehistoric ages; for the present Chautauqua Lake is only
the shrunken hollow of a vaster body in the geologic periods. In the
early 'seventies of the last century this peninsula was known as Fair
Point; but in a few years, baptized with a new name CHAUTAUQUA, it was
destined to make the little lake famous throughout the world and to
entitle an important chapter in the history of education.
CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDERS
EVERY idea which becomes a force in the world has its primal origin in a
living man or woman. It drops as a seed into one mind, grows up to
fruitage, and from one man is disseminated to a multitude. The
Chautauqua Idea became incarnate in two men, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis
Miller, and by their coördinated plans and labors made itself a mighty
power. Let us look at the lives of these two men, whose names are ever
one in the minds of intelligent Chautauquans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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