Secrets of the Florida Chautauqua

For nearly fifty years, residents and visitors of DeFuniak Springs have learned about everything from decorating porcelain to the intricacies of modern opera, thanks to the Chautauqua Movement.

by Melanie Radzicki McManus
photography by Lee Harrelson

SweetTea Journal (Fall/Winter 2006) – When Ann Robinson was a young girl in the 1940s, she always felt there was something special, almost magical, about her hometown of DeFuniak Springs, population three thousand (give or take a few). The tiny town in the center of Florida’s slender Panhandle does sport Lake DeFuniak, a spring-fed lake that’s almost perfectly round—supposedly one of only two such lakes in the world.

But for Robinson, that wasn’t it. It was something deeper, something much more intrinsic. “Whenever we went away to a football game or band contest, we always knew that DeFuniak was different from all the towns around here,” she muses. “There was a certain feeling of … ‘culture’ is the only way I know how to say it … that wasn’t present in the other small towns like ours.”

Diane Pickett, sixty-six, does not necessarily recall the quaint lumber town tucked away in Florida’s piney woods as having a different aura from its neighbors, as she lived there only a few years as a child. What she does remember is bobbing for apples and playing basketball in the town’s impressive Hall of  Brotherhood, a gleaming white-domed building reminiscent of our nation’s Capitol. Dubbed the Chautauqua Building, (pronounced “Shuh- TAW-kwa”), the striking structure captured her imagination and made her wonder what it was all about. She never dreamed how integral it would become in her life.

This landmark was erected due to the town’s participation in the Chautauqua Movement, which started in 1874 on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York. An experiment in adult continuing education, this movement took its name from the Seneca Indian place-name meaning “where the fish was taken out.” Its founders, Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent, were both Methodists and realized that once people left school, which back then was at a relatively early age, their only access to more education was through Sunday school. And while Sunday-school teachers were fairly proficient in the Bible and its teachings, that was typically where their expertise ended. So Miller and Vincent thought if Sunday-school teachers could learn about the arts, history, music, science, and various other subjects, they would be able to pass on this knowledge to the folks in their communities, resulting in a more educated populace.

The first two-week program attracted not only Sunday-school teachers, but also citizens at large, and Miller and Vincent knew they were onto something big. Within a short time, the Chautauqua Institution (as it’s now called) was offering a wide variety of programs, lectures, physical education, and concerts to attendees for nine weeks every summer. It also ran the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (a popular book club with members worldwide) and was viewed as a national forum where international relations, literature, and science could be discussed, along with major national issues such as women’s suffrage. Schools of Pedagogy and Languages eventually developed, as did institutions such as the Chautauqua Press and Chautauqua University, a year-round degree-granting school that helped shape what are today known as correspondence courses. There were even children’s programs on subjects such as the Bible, manners, and obedience.

With great popularity comes imitation, and soon the “tent” Chautauquas were being held across the nation and all over the world. The largest Chautauqua offshoot opened in February 1885 in DeFuniak Springs as a winter alternative to New York’s summer assembly. DeFuniak Springs, then just a railroad supply depot, was selected due to the lobbying efforts of railroad folks who knew that a winter Chautauqua would be beneficial to their business.

DeFuniak Springs’ initial five-day event offered classes in everything from taxidermy and bread making to elocutionary vocal drills and piano playing. Speakers included Sau Ah Brah, lecturing on his native country of Burma (today Myanmar), and Lydia M. von Folkenstein of Jerusalem, who gave illustrated lectures on Palestine.

Like the original Chautauqua, the Florida version was a success and quickly grew, taking the nascent town of DeFuniak Springs right along with it. Hotels began opening to house attendees. A children’s temple, fine-arts hall, school of cookery, and amphitheater seating 2,500 were constructed, plus a public library that’s still in existence today. Northerners began building impressive winter “cottages” around the lake and along radiating streets. The town—which hadn’t even incorporated yet—grew from one hundred or so residents in 1887 to nine hundred in 1893, a 45 percent annual growth rate. In 1909 came the opening of the magnificent Hall of Brotherhood that Pickett never forgot. The immense building contained a four-thousand-seat auditorium and stage that could hold one hundred performers, making it one of the state’s largest auditoriums.

Unfortunately, the grand building didn’t serve its intended purpose for very long. By 1920 the Florida Chautauqua was on its last leg, weakened by the advent of things such as the automobile and the radio, which gave people easy access to information and new ideas. And so the Florida Chautauqua quietly faded away until it was only a pleasant memory for the residents of  DeFuniak Springs. Most of its grand buildings eventually were torn down, burned, or turned into housing, with the main exceptions being the library and Hall of Brotherhood, which were used for events such as boxing matches and USO dances.

Members of the town’s next generation, including Robinson, had varying levels of knowledge about the Florida Chautauqua that had built their town. Yet whether they knew of it firsthand through a relative or via scattered reminiscences, they all felt its almost palpable presence.

Dennis Ray grew up on a farm outside of DeFuniak Springs in the 1930s and 1940s, left for several decades, and then returned in 1993 to retire. An enthusiastic man with bright blue eyes and thinning white hair, Ray credits the doctorate he received in economics and industrial management to the lingering effects of the Chautauqua Movement.

Ray’s mother attended many Chautauqua sessions as a young girl, he says, and she fell in love with learning. She had her children read many of the same books she had read during the sessions fifteen to twenty years earlier. And although they lived on a farm, she was a stickler for certain social graces, such as having the table properly set. This passion for knowledge and culture impressed young Ray, who became the first member of his family to earn a college degree.

If Ray, his mother, and Robinson were so profoundly affected by Chautauqua, so too were many other residents of this attractive little town. And that’s probably why today, some eighty years later, the town of more than five thousand has a surprising wealth of cultural enrichment activities available for its citizens, such as reading clubs, a local theater, and public concerts.

Yet over the years, people moved away from DeFuniak Springs, and new residents—who had no connection to, or knowledge of, the Florida Chautauqua—moved in. The name became merely an unwieldy word to some, peculiar to their new hometown. And the once-stately Hall of Brotherhood, which had its back half shorn off in a storm, was just a weather-beaten structure to others. But in the mid-1980s, Pickett barreled back into town.

A forceful, decisive woman, Pickett found the town in decline. Determined to breathe new life into it, she formed various civic groups, learning about DeFuniak’s Chautauqua history along the way. And then it hit her—Chautauqua’s revival might be the key to renewed prosperity for DeFuniak Springs. So in 1996, she organized a one-day Chautauqua program, which featured speakers, porcelain-painting classes, and a religious lecture. Although modest, it received rave reviews.
The Florida Chautauqua was alive once again.

This past February marked the eleventh Chautauqua Assembly under Pickett’s lead in DeFuniak Springs. The four-day event featured performances by the Orlando Opera, the Broadway cabaret act of conductor/vocal arranger/pianist David Friedman, political discussions, a tour of historic homes, and painting workshops. Lectures included recent Social Security reform proposals and an interfaith panel on religion, while speakers made presentations on a variety of subjects, from African-American artists to basket weaving. And of course, the event included the standard porcelain-painting workshop, a class offered at the early Florida Chautauquas.

Local artist Mary Vinson, eighty-two, has led the porcelain-painting workshop every year. And even though she’s had some health issues of  late, she won’t consider stepping down because she’s a strong believer in Chautauqua’s power to change lives.

Take her own workshop. “Porcelain painting is such a happy thing to do and opens up a whole new world to people,” she says, gesturing to the creamy porcelain pieces, paints, and brushes crowding the studio tucked behind her home. “When people start painting in my class, they relax for the next three hours, and they’re so proud when they’re finished. You don’t realize what painting can do for you.”

Although Pickett is already enthusiastically planning the twelfth assembly, she admits it’s a difficult event to conduct financially. The ticket prices, kept low to keep the programs affordable, cover just a fraction of the costs. But that doesn’t slow her down. “There’s no point in thinking small,” she chuckles. “I’d love to build it back to a nine-week season. That’s my dream.”

And she says that dream can come true with adequate financial support from the community, which would be rewarded when the spirited Chautauqua once again transforms DeFuniak into the cultural center of Northwest Florida and the economic driver for the entire county. “I once read the motto,” Pickett says, “ ‘Make no little plans, for they have not the power to stir men’s minds.’ I live by that motto.”

Editor’s note: For more on the Florida Chautauqua in DeFuniak Springs, please call (850) 892-7613 or visit www.florida-chautauqua-center.org.