Wisdom of the Past: Chandler: Wooglin-on-Chautauqua

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Wooglin-on-Chautauqua
By Major George M. Chandler, Michigan 1898
(excerpted from Beta Life)

"A party of Beta Theta Pi alumni, while en route to the recent Saratoga Convention (of 1883) stopped at Lake Chautauqua, New York."

Thus begins the narrative of one of the things which has played a great part in the life of our fraternity. Although the Wooglin Club was in active existence for only ten years, during that period eight conventions were held there - the Conventions of 1884, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893.

The club was Charles J. Seaman's idea, the legal title was the "Beta Theta Pi Alumni Club." It was incorporated under the laws of Ohio on March 5, 1884; the place of its principal office was stated to be Cleveland; the names of the incorporators were John I. Covington, Miami 1870, Cincinnati, Ohio, Sylvester G. Williams, Ohio Wesleyan 1877, Cincinnati, Ohio; James D. Cleveland, Western Reserve 1844, Cleveland, Ohio; Charles J. Seaman, Denison 1871, Cleveland, Ohio; Isaac N. Himes, Washington and Jefferson 1853, Cleveland, Ohio; and Charles D. O'Connor, Wooster 1877, Cleveland, Ohio. The following composed the first board of trustees, John Reily Knox, Miami 1839 Greenville, Ohio; John I. Covington, Miami 1870, Cincinnati, Ohio, Edwin H. Terrell, DePauw 187I, San Antonio, Texas, Charles J. Seaman, Denison 1871, Cleveland, Ohio; Charles D. O'Connor, Wooster 1877, Cleveland, Ohio; and Warrington K. L. Warwick, Kenyon 1884, Massillon, Ohio.

The club was located on the eastern shore of Chautauqua Lake near the head of the lake and opposite Mayville. The water frontage was about a quarter of a mile, the depth about half that distance. The ground rose delightfully from the lake to the club house. Behind the property was the railroad with the club's own platform, no need of a station - the trains stopped on signal - and beyond the railroad was the highway with the farm house which was also the telegraph office and post office - "Wooglin, New York."

The clubhouse was built in the spring of 1884 - frame, quite up to the standard of summer hotels of the period, well arranged and entirely adequate. There was a good well on the place, a windmill, and a tank. Summer clubhouses in those days had no running water in the guest rooms and no private bathrooms. Kerosene lamps were the universal custom. There was a billiard table up on the fourth floor in the tower. The club owned a fifty-foot steam yacht and its own wharf; the lake steamers stopped at Wooglin wharf on signal. There were bath houses and rowboats, a baseball diamond and a tennis court.

The "office" or lobby was spacious with a most attractive open fireplace. The stairs were wide as they left the main floor and at the landing half way up divided and continued to the right and left to the second floor. On the landing was a very good stained glass window, the Beta dragon holding the shield; and, depicted thereon, the altar with Father Wooglin swearing the youth to eternal loyalty. It made a lasting impression on all who saw it. In the lobby on the wall over the door to the dining room on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace was the strange legend "Thebe stisgo oden ough forus", and when you heard the "Oi Ouranioi" of Professor Gaines and his St. Lawrence Cantonese, and actually saw Pater Knox talking to Major Ransom and Robb and Hanna and Shepardson, and then, just a little apart as became undergraduates, noted Dudley Hard, Bert Snell and Dwight Morrow, then in truth it was evident that the best was good enough for the chosen ones.

The Convention of 1884 met at Wooglin and was an unqualified success. The future of the club seemed assured. Now from the standpoint of the fraternity note the date - 1884. There were few chapter houses in Beta Theta Pi in those days - Amherst, Cornell, Michigan - 1884 to 1894 was the decade in which the fraternity changed from a chapter hall fraternity to a chapter house fraternity, and the change although gradual was of great moment. The change was from an era of small financial burden in each chapter, for the "hall," two rooms and anteroom and perhaps a small kitchen over the college book store, could be rented for a small sum and the matter of heat and light was not heavy. A chapter hall meant a chapter of varying size, eight, ten, a dozen or twenty, one year; and the same chapter doubled or halved the next year or the year following as the "Beta material" in the Freshman class waxed or waned. The new members were chosen one at a time on the basis of pure friendship and congeniality.

With the chapter house came the chapter of twenty to thirty members; for eight or ten were too few to pay the rent and make up the cost of operation of a dwelling and the more-than-twenty membership had to be maintained each year. Even a twenty-four chapter meant a delegation of eight in the Freshman class of whom five might be top notchers, two pretty good, but perhaps the last one was a "filler." Of course the chapter house meant living together and probably eating together and that made a powerful bond, and the good sized chapter certainly had a steadying effect and provided good business training; but the old days of absolute freedom of election, one at a time and at any time during the entire four years, were about over; the delegation had to be made up in the fall, the overhead had to be met.

The chapter was approaching the club - how one hates to say it - and it was the last chance in the formative growth of the fraternity to stamp character into the fraternity. Note the preposition used - "into" not "onto." And herein came the Wooglin Club's great service to Beta Theta Pi, a service which has never been properly recorded in enduring print.

Frank Sisson told me twenty years ago that one of the distinct epochs in his life was in the summer of 1891 when he came to Wooglin from out in the "Military Tract" in Illinois to represent his chapter at the Beta convention. The boys arrived by boat as the sun was casting long shadows. The boat pulled up to the wharf and the boys piled out and stepped into a group of somewhat older men. A dignified gentleman grasped his hand and he looked into the kindly eyes of my father whom he instinctively recognized as the counterpart of his own father, the only difference being that one was his own flesh and blood, the other was only his brother in Beta Theta Pi - only his older Beta brother.

And so year after year the convention met at Wooglin and year after year the older men went there to spend the summers with their wives and families. Pater and Mrs. Knox, Major and Mrs. Ransom, General Smith, Governor Beaver, Professor and Mrs. Gordon, Captain Davies, T. M. Baxter, C. D. Roys, Governor Porter, Captain and Mrs. J. C. Lewis, Mr. and Mrs. A. D. Rich, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Chandler, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Scott the Hepburns, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Warren, Mr. and Mrs. Junius Beal Mr. and Mrs. W. K. L. Warwick, Dr. Reamy, Professor Gaines, the Hamiltons, Lon Snyder, the Worralls, General Thruston, Dr. Ramsay, the Seamans, the Terrells, the Covingtons, Dr. Himes, Syl. Williams, Ed Good, Will Sprague, Willis Robb, Eugene Wambaugh, Chambers Baird, Raimond Baird, Will Siebert, Cal. Hanna, Frank Shepardson, the Thornburgs, Dr. Marquis, two or three Manleys, Walton Mitchell, Willard Austen, Professor Hume, George Billman, Charlie Sigerfoos, Fred Beekman, Wallace Farrington, Billy Graves, Charlie Trabue - it would take pages to record them all. Of course, they weren't all there every summer, but there was always a goodly group of worthy Betas which gave steadiness and dignity to the actual conventions and which gave all that we crudely call culture to every nook and cranny of Wooglin.

It was indeed a wonderful experience for the young man of college age to have a week or a summer in that atmosphere of Beta Theta Pi and in those surroundings of American family life at its very simplest and very best. And so true it was and so great an impression did it make on the fraternity and on the undergraduates that last year in the Paris Opera House between the acts when everybody walks out in the grand hall to see and to be seen Fred Beekman, the dean of the American Cathedral in Paris, told me the same story in almost the same words which Frank Sisson had used twenty years ago.

For a combination of reasons, principally financial, the club was not opened in 1894. The convention met at Niagara Falls in the hope that at the last minute it might be held at Wooglin; but 1893 was the last year of grace. On June 28, 1901, the clubhouse was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

Yes, the Wooglin Club was in active operation for a single decade only, but its influence in Beta Theta Pi was deep and vital.