Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church. Jefferson Park is now Skinner Park. Northeast corner of Adams & Throop St. Billy Sunday started attending in 1886, became an elder, and was ordained there in 1905. Real Billy Sunday: IN 1905 Mr. Sunday was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church, by the Chicago Presbytery, the ordination taking place at the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Read more...
Site of Pacific Garden Mission from 1880-1923, location of Billy Sunday conversion. Wikipedia: In 1880, the mission moved to 67 E. Van Buren Street, in a location which was formerly known as the Pacific Beer Garden. At that time, the current name of the mission, Pacific Garden Mission, was adopted; However, evangelist D.L. Moody suggested that the name of the former occupant should 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...
Horatio Spafford, well-off lawyer and friend of D.L. Moody lived here on the north side of Chicago. During the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, he lost much of his real estate holdings. A couple years later he sent his family ahead to Europe where D.L. Moody would be preaching. The Ville du Havre sank, and all four of his daughters Read more...
