John Clarke’s tombstone stands in the John Clarke Family Cemetery, on the west side of Dr. Marcus Wheatland Boulevard. The key to the cemetery’s padlock is available at the United Baptist Church office. Adjoining the cemetery, a small park has two Memorials to John Clarke: A plaque on a small rock, and a monument, erected by the Baptist History Preservation Society. Read more...
Dwight L. Moody was working at his uncle’s Holton Shoe Store. Moody promised his uncle he’d go to church, and enrolled in Edward Kimball’s Sunday School Class. On April 21, 1855, Kimball went to visit Moody to talk about his soul. Not sure if he should interrupt his work he walked past the store. Moody says, “One day I recollect Read more...
John Jasper (named by his mother, Tina, after the beloved disciple, John) was born on July 4, 1812, the youngest of twenty-four children. John’s father, Philip, was a Baptist preacher among the slaves of Fluvanna County, Virginia, located in the central part of the state just east of Charlottesville; unfortunately, John never knew his father because Philip died about two Read more...
Thomas Obadiah Chisholm was born in a log house in Lake Spring (marked by the present Lake Spring Road) near Franklin, Kentucky, in 1866 – just after the Civil War. His boyhood was spent on a farm – and then at 16 he started teaching in the country schoolhouse he had attended. and in teaching district schools until he Read more...
This stop isn’t exactly a Christian historic site, but an interesting look at history from the Christian era. George Herman “Babe” Ruth (1895-1948) was called the “Sultan of Swat” An inaugural member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and holder of records that still stand today, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously by President Donald Trump. In Read more...
One moved two miles west and built the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church (which was torn down in 1953). The other moved into the new village of Pleasant Plains, Illinois and constructed the current building in 1857. Two additions have been made, but the sanctuary is nearly the same as during Cartwright’s time. Featured Image Credit: “Peter Cartwright United Methodist Read more...
Halfway between O’Hare Airport and Rockford Illinois is a historical marker about a famous evangelist. Billy Sunday had given up professional baseball for the Chicago White Stockings in 1890 and began holding evangelistic meetings across the nation. During the summers he would take a break from the road – he wanted a place that felt like his hometown of Ames, Read more...
Billy Sunday home from 1862-1872. Road renamed Billy Sunday Lane Burial of Albert Sunday, older brother of Billy, and Mary Jane Corey, Billy’s mother Image Credit: Sep 20, 1916, Page 11 – Boston Post at Newspapers.com. www.newspapers.com/image/74642292/?match=1&terms=%22boyhood%20days%20again%3A%20billy%20sunday%22. 1851 – Squire Martin Cory (maternal grandfather of Billy Sunday) settlement started with a Land Patent on 160 acres 1862 – Read more...
Wikipedia: George Bennard was a native of Youngstown, Ohio, but was reared in Iowa. After his conversion in a Salvation Army meeting, he and his wife became brigade leaders before leaving the organization for the Methodist Church.[1] As a Methodist evangelist, Bennard wrote the first verse of “The Old Rugged Cross” in Albion, Michigan, in the fall of 1912[a] as Read more...
