Billy Sunday Home

Billy Sunday (1862-1935) was born north of Des Moines, Iowa. His father died just five weeks after he was born, in the Union Army during the Civil War. Sent to the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, he discovered his athletic abilities.

Upsetting the state champion, Sunday went from the Marshalltown fire brigade ball team, to the professional leagues with the Chicago White Stockings.

While competitive in his batting ability, he was remarkable in his speed, beating the fastest man in the now-American League in a 100 yard race – by ten feet!

One afternoon Sunday was downtown Chicago and heard a music group from Pacific Garden Mission. Sunday came to the rescue mission, and was converted to Christianity. In 1888, he was married to the Presbyterian Helen Thompson.

In 1891 he left a $3,500 contract to play ball for $83 per month at the YMCA. In 1893, Sunday joined J. Wilbur Chapman’s evangelistic team. In 1896, Sunday launched his first week of meetings in Garner, Iowa. Starting in 1908, his wife “Ma” Sunday began managing his evangelistic meetings – and the meetings exploded.

With song leader Homer Rodeheaver introducing new songs like “The Old Rugged Cross,” the crowds were prepared for Sunday’s powerful preaching. An estimated 100 million people came to hear Sunday preach around 20,000 times, and an estimated 1 million people walked the Sawdust Trail.

In 1911, the Sundays moved to Winona Lake, Indiana into a 2,500 square foot home they named, “Mount Hood.” Ma Sunday willed it to be a museum to her husband’s ministry, and the home is maintained by Grace College.

Learn more from the Winona History Center:

During the early decades of the twentieth century, the energetic evangelist, Billy Sunday, was among the best known personalities in America. In 1911, Sunday moved his headquarters to Winona, where he and his wife, Helen, raised four children. Helen “Ma” Sunday outlived Billy and all their children, and before she died in 1957, she expressed her desire that the home remain untouched as a testament to the Sundays’ ministry. As a result, the Sunday residence has remained a virtual time capsule for more than half a century.

The Sunday family spent their summers in Winona Lake for several years prior to 1911, staying in a home called “The Illinois” located on a bluff overlooking MacDonald Island and the lake. In 1911 the family moved permanently to Winona Lake. The Illinois was lifted off its foundation and moved eastward across the street and a new bungalow was constructed in its place. The Sundays named the home Mount Hood. (They owned property in Oregon not far from Mount Hood and this was presumably the inspiration behind the name.)[3]

Many features of the home are typical of the Arts and Crafts Movement including the interior woodwork, shellacked burlap wall treatments, light fixtures, sleeping porches, and it’s exposed rafter tails and beams. It is believed that Helen Sunday was intimately involved in the interior’s design. One of her favorite places in the home was the Inglenook, a cozy seating area that surrounds the fireplace.[4]

Helen Sunday outlived all four of the children as well as her husband. By the 1950s, when Helen lived in the residence alone, the home was already becoming something of a pilgrimage site for admirers who wanted to see where the famed evangelist had lived. Helen thus began to provide informal tours of her home. In 1957, the year she died, a recording of Mrs. Sunday describing the details of the home was made and the published transcript has served to verify the fact that the home’s interior, other than some rearranging, has been largely preserved as it was when she lived there.[5]

Helen willed the home, along with everything in it, to the Winona Christian Assembly. When the assembly grounds were purchased by Grace College and Theological Seminary in 1968, Mt. Hood became part of Grace Schools. Most of the manuscript materials from the home were collected by the Grace College and Seminary library and these became the Billy Sunday Papers, the originals of which are housed in the Morgan Library Archives.

Prior to 1998, the home had never been professionally curated. With the creation of the Village at Winona and the renaissance of the Winona Lake Historic District, however, a professional curator was hired to oversee restoration of the home and curate a new Billy Sunday museum and visitor’s center, which was built near the Sunday property and opened in 2000. The visitors center educated guests about the historical significance of Billy Sunday and a team of volunteers led tours through the home. Although multiple efforts were made to organize the setup as a state-run historical site, this never materialized and when the principal donor removed funding from the operation, the museum and visitor’s center closed in 2010. Currently, the home is curated by the Winona History Center at Grace College, which also offers tours.

Grace College announced the home would be moved and partially restored in the summer of 2017. The foundation has been compromised by water and some of the exposed wood has become severely rotted. The home will be moved from its original site on Sunday Lane to a new location on the campus on College Ave. The current site along with adjacent land has been sold to by Grace College to Silveus Insurance Group, which intends to use the land in its plan for a new corporate headquarters.[6]