April 19, 2024
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Ottawa to commemorate Mark Twain speech at corner of Jefferson, Columbus streets

Twain gave a lecture at First United Methodist Church in 1869

By Michael Urbanec
First United Methodist Church as it stood in 1866, three years before Mark Twain came to speak.

First United Methodist Church, as it stood in 1866, three years before Mark Twain came to speak. At that time it was known as Methodist Episcopal Church. (Michael Urbanec)

First United Methodist Church, at the corner of Jefferson and Columbus streets in Ottawa, is not only home to one of the oldest congregations in La Salle County, but it’s also the historic location of a lecture given by Mark Twain.

The Ottawa Historic Preservation Commission met at the church Thursday afternoon to discuss the best location for a storyboard that depicts Twain’s 1869 speech.

A photo of Mark Twain taken around the time of the lecture.

A photo of Mark Twain taken around the time of the lecture. (Contributed photo)

Commission member Lorraine McCallister said Twain was one speaker in a series of 10 hosted in 1869 by the newly-founded Ottawa YMCA, which had a board of directors made up of all the ministers of the churches in town.

“It was a new entity in Ottawa and they had a reading room downtown, a place for young men in particular,” McCallister said. “It wasn’t for sports or exercise. It was to improve their mind and get them off the streets.”

Starting in late 1868 through the next spring, the group hosted lectures. Twain was the fourth lecturer on Jan. 13, 1869.

Twain spoke about a trip he had taken on a ship called the Quaker City.

“He had been sent on this trip by a newspaper called the Alta California,” McCallister said. “They had sent him to the Sandwich Islands, what is now Hawaii, and he wrote back articles that they published in the newspapers.”

His articles published in the Alta California made up much of what he spoke about while on his speaking tour.

McCallister said Twain was on a speaking tour as part of an effort to prove he wasn’t a ruffian to his future wife’s family. Twain went on the marry Olivia Langdon in 1870.

“His lecture here was different than most of the other lectures because the others spoke on very serious topics,” McCallister said. “They were meant to be informative and educational. Unsurprisingly, his had a humorous bent.”

McCallister said Twain isn’t the only important American figure to take part in the Ottawa YMCA’s series of lectures, it wrapped up with abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

There also are plans to include Douglass on the commemorative sign, but, as that discovery was made recently, plans aren’t yet concrete.