Billy Sunday (1862-1935) is regarded as the most prominent — and influential — evangelist of the early part of the 20th century. Born near Ames, he spent part of his youth in Marshalltown, then returned here in 1909, where he spoke to a packed tabernacle of his followers. “He came to Marshalltown for six weeks in 1909, and spoke twice Read more...

Formerly the site of the McFerrin house, of John B. McFerrin, the Methodist evangelist who President James K Polk heard at a camp meeting in 1833 and was provoked, but left “a convicted sinner, if not a converted man.” Read more...

The street beside the Capitol and the old Palace is named for the missionary who impacted Hawaii   From Wikipedia: They sailed on November 19, 1822 on the ship Thames under Captain Clasby from New Haven, Connecticut in the second company from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Hawaii. They arrived to the Hawaiian Islands April 24, 1823 and landed in Honolulu April 27.[3] On Read more...

The lock and key from this jail is in the Virginia Baptist History Museum in Richmond, and can be viewed at https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/starexponent.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/16/716a0499-9518-5823-9b53-27f1b0b9db61/5c65aa14703d5.image.jpg?resize=670%2C500 Early congregations also gathered at their own risk, as when the well-bred men of Culpeper County galloped their horses through a crowd that had formed to hear the Reverend James Ireland preach from his cell while incarcerated for Read more...

D.L. Moody tells about Henry Moorhouse: “In 1867, when I was preaching in Dublin, at the close of the service a young man, who did not look over seventeen, though he was older, came up to me and said he would like to go back to America with me, and preach the Gospel. I thought he could not preach it, and I said I Read more...

In 1896 the Democratic National Convention would be held in Chicago. Who would emerge as the leader of the party to be their presidential nominee? The Coliseum in Chicago was twice the size of Madison Square Garden, and had just been completed. It almost was finished the previous year when it collapsed – but was quickly rebuilt. Buffalo Bill’s Wild Read more...

TL, DR: Billy Sunday’s first professional baseball game was played May 22, 1883, in Chicago at now-Millennium Park. Ten years later, on June 11, 1893, D.L. Moody would preach to his largest audience at the same spot, in a circus tent! The 1890s were the peak of the Gilded Age. Industrialization, wage growth, railroads, factories, mines, immigration, formed the boom Read more...

Abraham Lincoln, on his way to the White House to be inaugurated as President, stopped by Dwight L. Moody’s Sunday School in “Little Hell” I was once as poor as any boy in this school, but I am now President of the United States, and if you attend to what is taught you here, some of you may yet be Read more...

On this site in 1855, was where Edward Kimball, taught Sunday School. A young D.L. Moody came to his class one Sunday. Kimball was impressed to visit his at the shoe store that his uncle operated nearby. Read more...

John Girardeau was pastor of the Anson Street Presbyterian Mission in the late 1850s, before the Civil War. The Mission was targeted to the enslaved population. In Girardeau’s biography we read: The greatest event in his ministry was the revival in the later fifties. This began with a prayer meeting that constantly increased until the house was filled. Some of Read more...