The Stelzl Family,
Performers on the 1914 Chautauqua Circuits

"Cheyenne is a dandy town, and I would like to live there....."

This remarkable survivor is the gift of Kathy Guidry. It is a diary kept by Martha Stelzl, a young woman who performed with her parents and sister on one of the 1914 Chautauqua circuits. All born and trained in Germany, in 1914 the family lived in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. They played their first date in Havelock, Nebraska on July 4th, proceeding on to Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and points further north and west into Canada, returning to Mount Pleasant in early September.

Martha records her astute and amusing observations, pastes in hotel letterheads and advertisements, and lays in clippings about Chautauqua performers she meets as well as candid photographs of the family taken by the people they travel with. The two pages below describe Cheyenne, Wyoming as viewed on July 10, 1914.

In other seasons, the Stelzl's performed with the Redpath Circuit and their promotional brochures have been digited in the Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century database.