e 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 coordinated 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.

John Heyl Vincent was of Huguenot ancestry. The family came from the
canton of Rochelle, a city which was the Protestant capital of France in
the period of the Reformation. From this vicinity Levi Vincent (born
1676), a staunch Protestant, emigrated to America in the persecuting
days of Louis XIV., and settled first at New Rochelle, N. Y., later
removed to New Jersey, and died there in 1736. For several generations
the family lived in New Jersey; but at the time of John Heyl Vincent's
birth on February 23, 1832, his father, John Himrod Vincent, the
great-great-grandson of the Huguenot refugee, was dwelling at
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Dr. Vincent used to say that he began his ministry
before he was six years old, preaching to the little negroes around his
home. The family moved during his early childhood to a farm near
Lewisburg, Pa., on Chillisquasque Creek, where at the age of fifteen he
taught in the public school.

When not much above sixteen he was licensed as a local preacher in the
Methodist Episcopal Church. He soon became a junior preacher on a four
weeks' circuit along the Lehigh River, which at that time seems to have
been in the bounds of the old Baltimore Conference. He rode his circuit
on horseback, with a pair of saddlebags behind him, and boarded 'round
among his parishioners. His saintly mother, of whose character and
influence he always spoke in the highest reverence, died at this time,
and soon after he went to visit relatives in Newark, N. J. There he
served as an assistant in the city