Town Homecoming Celebration

In 1910, the concept of a homecoming celebration, in relation to a school, church or a town, was pretty much a foreign concept. In fact, the University of Missouri is usually given credit for the first homecoming celebration in 1911.

Back in Washington, Illinois in 1910, the town was beaming with pride. Having gone dry just two years earlier ending the reign of the saloon, the town had made great infrastructural improvements to clean up its image to attract businesses and residents to what was now a model community.

In May 1910, an idea was brought forth to have a community-wide homecoming, to invite those who had moved on from Washington back for a week-long celebration. Organizers of the event from the Hopewell Grange, the Farmers’ Institute and the Commercial Club promised that the week could be one of the greatest in the town’s history, but it would take help from everyone in the community to make it work.

The biggest job the community had in making the event a success, besides donating money to the cause, was spreading the word. It was 1910, and there were only two ways out-of-towners received information about the event. Either they had maintained a subscription to the Washington newspaper after moving, or they were notified of the event from a current resident by mail.

The inaugural homecoming was set for September 5-10, 1910. An entire week of entertainment was planned, with speakers planned for every evening, and Kennedy’s Motion Picture shows at Danforth Hall shown every day. Kennedy had been in Washington showing his films many times, traveling throughout Central Illinois from 1906-1911.

There was also a baseball game played every day in Highland Park. Highland Park was north of Jefferson Street and west of Farm Creek, which was wide open at the time. This area was also the site of the free city-wide picnic during the celebration, where Captain Herman Jaeger was brought in from Peoria to “roast the fatted ox.”

People attended the event from all over the country. The Washington Post newspaper listed at least 300 different people/families that had traveled to Washington for the celebration. It was decided after the success of the 1910 Homecoming to make it a permanent event.

The 1911 event closely followed the script from 1910, and drew an even larger crowd.

As preparations began for 1912, the event planning committee had ballooned to almost fifty people, and the first strains of putting on such a large event in such a small community were starting to be felt. Persistent requests for donations permeated the newspaper. Invitations became easier, however, as previous attendees were sent invitation postcards.

The 1912 celebration was a bit different than the previous two. It seems the committee’s focus was to bring in big-name, and subsequently expensive, speakers. Three of the speakers during the week were from the east coast.

The Homecoming celebrations continued through 1916, with different attractions being added each year and large crowds continuing to make the journey to Washington every September. In 1916 over 600 former residents returned for the event.

Surprisingly, the 1917 Homecoming was canceled. A committee was formed, but disbanded after they could not garner the necessary support from the local businesses. It looked like the event had folded at its peak.

In 1919 a bunch of factors came together to make the homecoming week return. There were no plans to put on a celebration, but George Tobey, representative of a traveling carnival company called the National Lyceum Bureau, approached the Commercial Club and offered them a lifeline. He offered to provide all of the entertainment, including concerts, speakers, and children’s entertainment. The Commercial Club considered his price fair, and also decided to make this a joint homecoming of former residents, as well as soldiers returning from WWI. It was held July 4-8, 1919 with great success.

In 1920, the 1919 plan was repeated successfully, but the traveling company never returned after that, and the Homecoming celebration died. The town would not be without a celebration for long, however, as in 1925 Washington would celebrate its Centennial in much the same way.