Category: Conferences

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Two Chautauqua Summers

The Athenaeum Hotel, 1912

Jane Addams left Illinois for Chautauqua, New York, on Friday, July 4, 1902, at 3 p.m. Traveling on the New York Central Railroad, perhaps in a sleeping car, she had at least one book with her to read, as she always traveled with books. Onboard the train, Addams enjoyed the countryside passing by outside the train windows and engaged in casual conversation with fellow travelers. She may have snacked or had a light meal in the dining car and polished up her series of five lectures she was scheduled to deliver during her week-long stay at the Chautauqua Institution. She arrived in Chautauqua in the wee hours of the morning the following day and checked into the Athenaeum Hotel, a Second-Empire building opened to guests in 1881. The hotel boasted an ornate three-story tower with a mansard roof, centered on the front façade of the hotel. It stuck a magnificent pose from atop a small hill overlooking a deep lawn and Chautauqua Lake, matching in style the long skirts and elaborate hats of the women who strolled on the winding paths below it.

Exactly 123 years after Addams arrived in Chautauqua, I left Illinois for Chautauqua at 7:45 a.m. I drove by myself in my Ford Escape hybrid, stopping overnight in northern Indiana at my mom’s house. I drove the remaining six of the nine-hour journey the next day, snacking on cashews and dried mango while alternately listening to an audio book and rehearsing memorized sections of the one lecture that I was scheduled to deliver during my week-long stay at the Chautauqua Institution. I arrived in Chautauqua in the midafternoon on Sunday, July 6, and checked into the Athenaeum Hotel. Despite its peeling paint and the somewhat ragged appearance of the wicker chairs lined across the inviting two-story porches, the historical charm of the building calmed my road-weary spirit and my nerves, frazzled from sharing the road with semi-tractor trucks oblivious to speed limits. I would not learn it until later, but the stately hotel tower was two-stories shorter than the one that greeted Jane Addams in 1902, the upper stories having been dismantled for safety reasons in the 1920s. Still, in the hazy heat of July in 2025, the hotel was yesteryear grand, nestled as it was among mature trees and rich foliage, the Victorian porches already calling me. I made a vow to enjoy them each day of my visit, to drink coffee and watch every sunrise over the lake and sip cocktails as evening shadows fell over the enchanting, historic village.

In 1902, Jane Addams was not only a featured lecturer for Chautauqua’s “Social Settlement Week,” but she also brought with her the Hull-House Summer School. After ten years at her alma mater in Rockford, Illinois, this year she was hosting the Summer School at Chautauqua Institution. Seventy young women, mostly teachers from Chicago, would reside in various cottages scattered across the Chautauqua campus, participate in a variety of Institution lectures on topics like pedagogy and history and participate in activities like swimming and an excursion to Niagara Falls. The students would also attend Addams’s lectures and then met with her each evening in a shelter by the ravine piazza of the Institution’s auditorium. Addams’s good friend and fellow settlement house leader Graham Taylor from Chicago Commons was also joining her as a member of the Chautauqua faculty that summer.

In 2025, I was at Chautauqua as part of a group assembled by President Lincoln’s Cottage, a historic site in Washington, DC, where Abraham Lincoln and his family lived for one-quarter of his presidency. It is the place where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and where he and his family grieved the death of eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln in 1862. Our group was leading a Master Class series to provide both historical and modern contexts for the Metropolitan Opera’s Chautauqua workshop of Lincoln in the Bardo, based on the novel of the same name about Willie’s death and his father’s grief. My lecture was part history about the Lincoln family and grief, and it also shared my personal story of grief and illustrated, as well, how my emotional connection to the figures I study informs my understanding of the past.

I was in Chautauqua because of my years as an editor of Abraham Lincoln’s papers, but I went to Chautauqua with Jane Addams in my head. I knew about the long, storied history of the Chautauqua Institution through my work editing Jane Addams’s papers, and I was eager to breathe in the place to which she returned many times during her long career as a reformer, writer, and renowned lecturer.

Chautauqua Institution was founded in 1874 by Episcopal Bishop John Heyl Vincent (1832-1920) and Lewis Miller (1829-1899), a religious leader, educator, and industrialist. The first Chautauqua assemblies were camp meetings for Sunday school teachers (attendees sleeping in actual tents!), but the organization expanded quickly four years later when Vincent established the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC), a correspondence school which offered “courses of reading for all classes of people.” The early popularity of the CLSC and the growth of the Chautauqua Institution in western New York spurred the organization of Chautauqua societies across the country, the Chautauqua Movement promoting the idea of lifelong learning for adults, celebrating the most important work of educators, scientists, artists, writers, political leaders, and reformers, and espousing the idea that an educated public is a healthier public.

In his 1886 book The Chautauqua Movement, Vincent wrote: “Education, once the peculiar privilege of the few, must in our best earthy estate become the valued possession of the many. It is a natural and inalienable right of human souls.”

Jane Addams was a lifelong learner herself, and all of her reform work in Chicago and beyond was rooted in her steadfast belief that education and learning had power to lift up individuals and communities and help create a better world for all people. It is not surprising, then, that she supported the Chautauqua Movement, as did numerous leaders during the Progressive Era.

Jane Addams at Chautauqua in 1915; Bishop Vincent is on the right.

Addams’s trip to Chautauqua for Social Settlement Week in July 1902 was not her first. She previously lectured there in July 1893 as part of another program about social settlements, and she returned in July 1895. In August 1898, she lectured on “Aspects of the Social Problem,” and in August 1900, she was back to deliver four lectures. Jane Addams valued the mission of Chautauqua, speaking at numerous Chautauqua Movement events throughout the Midwest and returning to Chautauqua Institution as a featured lecturer six times between 1903 and 1915. Ill health forced her to turn down an invitation to Chautauqua in 1918, but as she wrote Arthur Bestor, president of Chautauqua Institution, in March of that year: “My plans are of necessity indefinite but as it is always a pleasure to me to speak at [Chautauqua] I shall hope to be able to arrange it this year.”

My cabinet of curiosities. (And, yes, I do believe that Abraham Lincoln would have loved Jane Addams).

Two of Addams’s books were selected as part of the coveted CLSC’s annual reading curriculum: Newer Ideals of Peace in 1907-1908 and Twenty Years at Hull-House in 1911-1912. It is the Chautauqua Edition of Newer Ideals that I have in my Jane Addams cabinet of curiosities. The 2025 CLSC reading list includes one of my favorite books of recent years, Eve by scholar Cat Bohannon as well as Liberation Day, stories by George Saunders. Saunders was the featured lecturer at Chautauqua during the week I was there. He was present at the end of the week for the opera workshop of his brave and human novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Not bragging or anything, but it was a thrill for me to meet Saunders and have him inscribe my personal copy of Lincoln in the Bardo.

George Saunders was the star of my week at Chautauqua, but Jane Addams was always the star when she visited the Chautauqua Institution.

Even in 1915, when her peace work made her unpopular with some audiences, people clamored to read her books and articles, to meet her, and to hear her speak. In a speech at Chautauqua Institution in August that year, just four months after the United States entered the World War, she took the podium to defend herself. As an unwavering peace advocate, she was subject to criticism by many who believed that patriotism required total support of one’s government during wartime. Addams disagreed, believing instead that to be a patriot was to question the government and that free speech in time of war was even more important than in peacetime. In a speech at Carnegie Hall in New York on July 9, during which she had discussed her tour of Europe as part of the work of the International Congress of Women, Addams made some statements about soldiers, the use of stimulants in the European armies, and definitions of bravery that rankled many. However, at Chautauqua she reiterated those statements, reaffirmed the horror faced by men in the trenches, and celebrated the courage of soldiers.

I don’t know how the audience received her lecture, but that the Chautauqua Institution granted Jane Addams a forum to raise her voice of peace during a time of war, speaks to the Institution’s commitment to free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

I witnessed that commitment to free speech at Chautauqua, as well. In a crowded amphitheater on July 10, at the coveted daily 10:45 a.m. Chautauqua Institution lecture, I watched Deborah Rutter, the widely regarded and long-time director of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, defend her tenure leading the Center. Fired in February by President Trump for cultivating diversity and inclusion in the arts, Rutter spoke to the Chautauqua audience about the importance of creative expression in a democracy. She defended the Center’s mission to bring people of diverse backgrounds to perform on a variety of stages and to bring in audiences across all social, political, racial, ethnic, and economic divides. Her Chautauqua audience interrupted her speech numerous times in rousing applause of her arguments that art is important for art’s sake, that creative expression in dark political times can save us, and that we must support the arts even more strenuously now that some voices are under the threat of being silenced.

Jane Addams would have been every bit as impressed with the speech and the audience as I was.

My week at Chautauqua was inspiring, rewarding, eye-opening, and a little bit magical. It was a modern experience informed by my interest in and emotional connection to the past. I was there in the company of new friends and historical figures, Jane Addams front and center in my mind’s eye during my eight days on the Chautauqua campus. I am one of those history nerds who is always looking to run into ghosts of the past, and on that front my summer week in Chautauqua did not disappoint.

By Stacy Lynn, Associate Editor

 

A “Chautauquapolitan” on one of the glorious porches of the Athenaeum.

Pro Reader Tip: Are you looking for suggestions for your next read? Consider consulting the CLSC Book List, 1878-2024. There is bound to be a perfect book for you to consider. Cheers and happy reading!

Sources: Jonathan David Schmitz and William Flanders, Postcard History Series, Chautauqua Institution (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2011), 13, 52; American National Biography; John H. Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement (Boston: Chautauqua Press, 1886), 2; “Next Season at Chautauqua,” The Buffalo (NY) Review, June 21, 1902, 5; “Chautauqua 1902,” The Chautauquan, 35 (July 1902): 385-411; “Railway Time Tables; Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1902, 15; “Personal Record,” The Daily Journal (Freeport, IL), July 3 1902, 4; “Jane Addams Goes East to Open Summer School,” Chicago Tribune, July 5, 1902, 4; “Chautauqua Is Open,” The Fredonia (NY) Censor, July 9, 1902, 5; “A Fair Chautauqua,” Buffalo (NY) Evening News, July 10, 1902, 1; “Chautauqua’s Success,” Buffalo Evening News, July 13, 1902, 24; “Jane Addams to Be at Chautauqua,” Buffalo Evening Times, Aug. 11, 1915, 5; Hull-House Bulletin, 1 (Dec. 1, 1896): 3; Hull-House Bulletin, 15 (Semi-Annual, 1902, no. 2): 4; Selected Papers of Jane Addams, vol. 3, 320, 437, 654n7; Democracy and Education, August 9, 1900; Jane Addams to Julia Clifford Lathrop, July 13, 1902; Chautauqua Girls to Jane Addams, c. August 1902; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, August 15, 1903; Work and Play: Recognition Day Address, August 16, 1905; Hull-House Year Book 1906-1907; Macmillan Company to Jane Addams, October 11, 1906; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, July 10, 1907; Newer Ideals in Education, July 3, 1908; George Platt Brett Sr. to Jane Addams, January 10, 1911; Peace, August 14, 1915; Jane Addams to Arthur Eugene Bestor, March 1, 1918, all in Jane Addams Digital Edition.

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Presenting at the Chicago Women’s History Conference

Marilyn, Cathy, Jane, and Stacy at the Chicago Women’s History Conference, March 22, 2025.

The Jane Addams Papers Project represented at the Chicago Women’s History Conference this past Saturday. Cathy Moran Hajo, Stacy Lynn, and advisory board member Marilyn Fischer led a workshop devoted to the importance of Jane Addams, the digital edition, and how scholars and teachers can use it. Stacy talked about how influential Addams and the women of Hull-House were, and Cathy demonstrated the digital edition, while Marilyn discussed how she uses the digital edition to trace Addams’s word use in her three part book series about Addams as an evolutionary philosopher.

Our workshop was just one session in a day filled with really interesting work. The biggest challenge was choosing between them! And Jane Addams was everywhere! From the cardboard cutout at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s booth, to morning presentations by Sherryl Engstrom on Hull House Performs: A Description and Evaluative Study of the Performing Arts at Hull House, 1920-1937 and Fiona Maxwell on “We Women Would Rule the World of Politics”: Women’s Oratory and Activism at Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920. In the afternoon, we delighted to Ann Keating and advisory board member Rima Lunin Schultz’s presentation, “Beyond the Second Wave: Working Class Women Activists and City Planning: Florence Scala and Chicago’s Near West Side.”

Keynote speaker Jamila Woods was inspiring and plenary session with Pinqy Ring and her amazing students ended with an emotional bang. What an amazing time.

 

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Reconsidering Jane Addams: A Portrait of Anti-Imperialism?

Jane Addams (1906) Oil on canvas, by George de Forest Brush. National Portrait Gallery.

Last July marked another passing of the Association for Documentary Editing’s yearly conference, this time taking place in Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has endless museums, attractions, and performances to explore, but there was only one woman I wanted to meet: Jane Addams, of course. The National Portrait Gallery houses the only known full-color image of Addams, painted by George de Forest Brush in 1906, the process of which was detailed in many letters that can be found within the digital edition. It took some work getting to her – the front desk claimed Addams’s portrait was not currently on display even though I had pulled up a location on the Gallery’s website. Not one to be told “no,” I scoured the nooks and crannies of the museum, looking for Jane nestled among peace activists, child or immigrant welfare reformers, or suffrage protesters. Instead, I found her with what I believed to be a sort of motley crew in a section titled “Republic or Empire?” that detailed America’s thoughts on Spain’s involvement in the destruction of the USS Maine. Her fellow portrait sitters included Samuel Clemens, W.E.B. Du Bois, Benjamin Tillman, Moorfield Storey, Queen Lili’uokalani, and Theophilus Gould Steward, gathered together under the roof of “anti-imperialism.” Since visiting the Gallery, I’ve been wondering: Does Jane Addams truly belong among these figures, or would she be better represented elsewhere?

Queen Lili‘uokalani (c. 1892) Oil on canvas, by William F. Cogswell. Hawai’i State Archives.

Imperialism was a weighted topic during the early Progressive Era. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was convened specifically to regulate European colonization and trade in Africa, and to which the United States sent three diplomats to represent the American colonial empire. In 1887, the US renewed the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, further increasing American economic influence in Hawaii. This renewal set the stage for the overthrowing of Queen Lili’uokalani, the last reigning sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1893. In the 1890s, the “Scramble for Africa” continued, with Egypt overtaken by the British in 1882, and Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda subjugated in the 90’s and early 20th century. These global events culminate in the Gallery section’s primary focus, the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine, then stationed in Havana Harbor, Cuba to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence.

Admittedly, I am not an expert in Progressive Era imperialism, but I like to think I know Jane Addams quite well. During the events discussed above, Addams was dutifully creating and strengthening Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago modeled after Toynbee Hall of London. While she would go on to become active in global circles like peace and disarmament, Addams began her reform work locally, ensuring that marginalized citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were given uplifting amenities and a space to gather and learn. By our records, in the 1890s Addams wrote speeches and articles primarily about Hull-House, working women, and labor strikes – issues that stopped at the state level. Her interest in international affairs wouldn’t manifest fully until the onset of the first World War. Yet, despite all of this, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899.

It was in this same year that Addams gave her first signs of anti-imperial sentiments, with an article for the Central Anti-Imperialist League titled “Democracy or Militarism.” In it, she shows contempt toward countries with “an increased standing army, the soldiers of which are non-producers and must be fed by the workers.” She goes on to scorn the idea of “protecting the weak” as the excuse of a ruler to invade and subjugate outside nations, and shows disapproval toward the recent Spanish-American War. Even so, the last three paragraphs relate the then current state of Spain to events going on in Chicago rather than referencing any national affairs. After this, Addams didn’t discuss imperialism, anti or pro, much, if at all. The next time it was brought up in any meaningful way was a letter from Erving Winslow, Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, dated August 12, 1912 in which he chided Addams for supporting Theodore Roosevelt, a known imperialist, in the 1912 Presidential election.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1907) Gelatin silver print, by James E. Purdy. National Portrait Gallery.

The men Addams was grouped with were, from all accounts, more entrenched in the anti-imperialist scene than Addams ever was. Samuel Clemens was shown to be in favor of imperialism until about 1900. From then until his death in 1910, Clemens spoke and wrote often about his thoughts on the Treaty of Paris and the burgeoning Philippine-American War, and he was vocally critical of foreign countries’ imperialism as well. Du Bois extensively advocated for anti-imperialism, especially in Africa where, he argued, the Scramble for Africa was the foundation for World War I. Tillman was a staunch anti-imperialist, though his sentiments stemmed from the belief that white American lives were being wasted in the pursuit of militaristically subduing Filipino natives after the Spanish-American War. Moorfield Story was the Anti-Imperialist League’s second and last president from 1905-1920, and believed in a connection between America’s imperialistic endeavors and the country’s persecution of minority races. Queen Lili’uokalani had the most direct impact of the Age of Imperialism, deposed in 1893 by a group of sugar and pineapple businessmen. If Lili’uokalani was the most directly impacted, Steward was the least involved. Theophilus Gould Steward was primarily a clergyman, author, and educator, serving as a chaplain in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated regiment, from 1891-1907, including serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and later in the Philippines. Steward wrote about the experience of the African American soldier, which did touch on their struggle for freedom and citizenship, but he did not directly compare their strife to Filipinos resisting American colonial rule.

Alice Hamilton (1947) Charcoal and chalk on paper, by Samuel Johnson Woolf. National Portrait Gallery.

If not here, then where would Jane Addams belong? The National Portrait Gallery holds over 20,000 pieces in their various collections – certainly some of those could fit better with Addams’s narrative. To represent women building Chicago, they own a portrait of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a cabinet of a US President and a Hull-House volunteer, Alice Hamilton, a Chicago doctor and Hull-House volunteer, or Nettie Fowler McCormick, a Chicago philanthropist. In a wider perspective, outside her Chicago colleagues, there is Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Martha Carey Thomas, second president of Bryn Mawr College, and Julius Rosenwald, co-owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and philanthropist.

At the end of the day, Jane Addams’s portrait is no longer on display. Neither Clemens’s, Du Bois’s, Tillman’s, Storey’s, Lili’uokalani’s, or Steward’s portraits are currently available to view in person. I suppose that is the nature of a large collection of works with limited space to display them. Even so, this also means that Addams could be displayed along with any number of her peers at any point in time, perhaps to help tell an entirely different story about America’s elaborate history.

 

Victoria Sciancalepore

Assistant Editor

 

Other Sources: “Berlin West Africa Conference.” Encyclopædia Britannica, February 19, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-West-Africa-Conference; Hixson, William B. Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972; Jane Addams. “Democracy or Militarism.” Liberty Tracts, no. 1 (1899): 35–39; “Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898).” National Archives and Records Administration, February 8, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-resolution-for-annexing-the-hawaiian-islands; Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: H. Holt, 1993; “Maine Blown Up at Havana.” New York Tribune. February 16, 1898; Steward, Theophilus Gould. The Colored Regulars. Philadelphia, PA: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1904; Tillman, Benjamin. “Policy Regarding the Philippine Islands.” Congressional Record 32, no. 2 (February 21, 1899): 1529–33; Twain, Mark. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The North American Review 172, no. 531 (February 1901): 161–76.

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The Addams Papers Goes International!

Connemara, Ireland.

The Third Women’s History in the Digital World conference was held on July 6-7, 2017 at Maynooth University in Ireland and the Jane Addams Papers presented a panel on our digital edition. Editor Cathy Moran Hajo, Assistant Editor Victoria Sciancalepore, and our web developer Anneliese Dehner combined to present three aspects of “Editing Jane Addams.”

Cathy led off the panel talking about the “Big Picture: Conceiving a Digital Edition of  Jane Addams’ Papers,” providing a short history of the Addams Papers microfilm and book projects, and the process that went into deciding to digitize the microfilm edition. The decisions to be made involved thinking through the audience for the edition and what kinds of tools and resources they needed. In addition, Cathy discussed the decision to use the Omeka database-driven platform for the digital edition rather than using text encoding using XML. Going with a web-publishing friendly system allowed the Addams Papers to design a site that not only provides deep metadata, but also manages the project’s internal workflow, tracking information on each document as it passes through our permissions and copyright checks, metadata and transcription, and proofreading. Cathy also talked about her desire to see the Addams Papers edition be flexible enough that scholars and students can use its materials to build their own research projects.

Cathy talking about biographical resources.

Tori’s talk, “The Nuts and Bolts: How an Omeka-based Digital Edition Works,” brought us into the back end of the project, showing how we defined the metadata and relations between the 21,000 eventual documents, and the entries on people, organizations, publications, and events that are discussed in them. She described the use of the Items Relations Omeka plugin, which we tweaked some, to build an edition that lets users move flexibly between drafts and final versions, letters written by and to a person, and individuals who were members of an organization, or participated in an event.  She also talked about how we decided on a transcription policy.  Because we make the images of the documents available on the site, we wanted our transcriptions to be more useful as a search mechanism. We decided to standardize our transcriptions  (converting British spellings, archaic spellings, and misspellings) as long as we used brackets to signal that the editors had changed the text. Readers who want to see the original need only click to see the manuscript image. She also discussed our student workers at the Addams Papers–the engine that keeps the project moving. With editors focused on training and quality control, it is a cadre of 10-15 Ramapo College undergraduates that are entering and transcribing documents and researching and writing identifications.

Anneliese, Cathy, and Tori after the session at Kilmainham Gaol Museum

Anneliese discussed “Designing a User Interface for a Digital Edition.” Coming from the perspective of a digital library developer, Anneliese talked about her experiences working on the Jane Addams Papers and the Kentucky Civil War Governors Papers, also an Omeka site. Discussing the different values that the project had, she walked through the way that developers work with editors to configure their sites, looking at who the intended users of the site will be, the kinds of searching they will need, and how much metadata should be used for site navigation. Anneliese noted that the Addams site was interested in exposing metadata, developing spatiotemporal context for documents, and creating branching paths through the edition. The Kentucky Governors project looked to create a more linear path through documents, but were more interested in presenting transcriptions alongside images of documents.

Liz Stanley gave a keynote talk on the Olive Schreiner Letters Online

In addition to our panel session, we were able to learn about some extremely interesting projects in women’s history, both here in the U.S. and abroad. Rachel Love Monroy, Lauren N. Haumesser and Melissa Gismondi discussed the Founding Women project that seeks to build a federated documentary edition of a variety of women’s papers. Eric Pumroy spoke about Collegewomen.org, which seeks to build an inclusive resource about late 19th and early 20th century college experiences for women. Cécile Gotdon spoke about Ireland’s Military Pension Project, a fascinating look at detailed records of men and women involved in the Irish military between 1916-1923.  And Alvean E. Jones’ work to provide access of the history of St. Mary’s School for Deaf Girls in a way that makes it accessible to deaf scholars, by translating digitized material into Irish Sign Language videos. Helena Byrne discussed a project to gather a digital history of Irish women’s indoor football leagues in the 1960s. And Liz Stanley gave a wonderful presentation on the Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the difficulty of representing a person from the things left behind.

Thanks to all who attended for a fascinating time!