Author: Kraig McNutt

Email me at tellinghistory[at]yahoo.com

Billy Sunday in New Castle, Pennsylvania: A City Swept by Revival (September–October 1910)

When Billy Sunday came to New Castle, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1910, the city quickly discovered that it was not ready for what was about to happen.

The campaign opened on September 18, 1910, and from the very first service it was clear that the tabernacle—built to hold 7,500 people—was not nearly large enough. According to the New Castle Herald (Sept. 19, 1910), crowds overflowed the structure on opening day, spilling into the streets and surrounding grounds. What had been intended as a major civic event immediately became something larger: a public phenomenon.

For six weeks, New Castle lived inside a revival. Night after night, thousands gathered to hear Sunday preach in his unmistakable style—direct, forceful, unsparing, and deeply earnest. Newspapers across western Pennsylvania followed the meetings closely, treating the campaign as front-page news rather than mere church business.

By the time the final service concluded on October 30, the numbers were staggering.

In total, $12,500 was collected during the campaign, as reported by the Warren Times Mirror on November 3, 1910. But far more striking were the spiritual results reported by local churches: 6,383 recorded conversions, including 1,050 decisions on the final evening alone.

The New Castle Herald captured the meaning of those numbers in a powerful editorial reflection on October 31:

“Just think of 6,383 souls being added to the churches of this city and county. This means one out of every six persons residing in this city. It means a very much larger proportion in reality, for these 6,383 are all of age to think and to accept for themselves the doctrines of Christianity. In the light of this, the money given yesterday to the evangelist seems a trivial sum, when compared with the good he has done.”

That statement goes to the heart of why New Castle mattered in Sunday’s career. This was not simply a revival that filled a building or generated headlines. It reshaped congregations across an entire region. Local churches suddenly found themselves filled with new members, new energy, and new responsibility for discipleship.

The New Castle campaign also illustrates why Billy Sunday became such a defining figure in early twentieth-century America. In an era before radio, television, or social media, he could command massive crowds purely through reputation, word of mouth, and the sheer force of his preaching. Cities did not merely host Sunday; they were changed by him.

More than a century later, the New Castle revival stands as one of Sunday’s most dramatic successes. For six weeks in 1910, a steel-town community experienced a spiritual earthquake—one that newspapers, pastors, and ordinary citizens remembered long after the tabernacle was torn down.

For historians of revival, New Castle offers a vivid case study in how Sunday’s campaigns worked: huge crowds, intense emotion, measurable results, and lasting impact on local churches.

For the people of New Castle, it was simply the season when their city met Billy Sunday—and was never quite the same again.

Billy Sunday New York City campaign, c. 1917

“New York City gave me $120,485, Mr. Sunday said, and I turned over every cent for the work that I had said I would. I went to Chicago, and the city gave me $65,000 and I gave the sum to the Pacific Garden mission. I give away a tenth of my income. And that is all right. I do not advertise all the things I do with my money. I do not tell all the world the things that I pay off. You follow me around, some of you, and I will make you dizzy with the money I give away. But I don’t have to tell anyone. It is written down above so that is all that matters.”
As reported by The Richmond Item. Fri, May 26, 1922 ·

Billy’s New York Tribune editorial
The letter was typed on the back of Richmond January 1919 letterhead

New York Tribune
New York City N.Y.

For ten weeks in New York, I went the limit of my strength preaching Christ and Him crucified, explaining as plainly as I could the plan of Salvation as revealed in the Bible. Hundreds of thousands flocked to the old Tabernacle at One Hundred and sixty-eighth street and Broadway (the dearest spot in little old New York to me) and tens of thousands publicly expressed their faith in His atoning blood, proving beyond question of a doubt that people are willing and eager to go hear the Bible explained but will not go to hear it explained away.

There is no Christianity without the deity of Christ, there is no Salvation without faith in the atonement of Christ on Calvary. The doctrine that God is the father of us all and that “self-sacrifice is the key to Heaven” is religious bunk. The fountain head of this horrible war that has drenched the world with blood you will find was in that infamous hellish theology made in Germany. It is now showing its fangs in Russia.

The future existence of our government and its institutions depend in a large measure upon the class of people who will soon be called upon to assist in solving the grave problems that lie just ahead of us. It has been well said that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Therefore, it can rise no higher than the plane of its citizenship. Christianity is the only weapon with which we may successfully contend against extreme Socialism, Bolshevism, I.W. Wism and Anarchy.

When I pronounced the benediction the last night in New York my responsibility for the work there ended. I’ve never yet been satisfied with the results of any campaign I have ever conducted. No business house does as much business as it would like to do. No newspaper ever has as large a circulation as the owner would like to have. No doctor saves as many lives as he would like to save. I have never seen as many people accept Christ as I would like to see but I do my utmost in every campaign.

In a city where I held a campaign there was a church four squares from the Tabernacle. The pastor did not openly oppose the meeting, but he did not encourage his people to help. He had no ushers from his church in the aisles, no singers in the choir, no personal workers in the building, nobody on the committees. Neither he nor his church made any special investment of time energy or money. A few weeks after the meeting closed, he published a statement that though his church was scarcely more than a stone’s throw from the Tabernacle there were no results, and the campaign was a failure.

In the same city another pastor, whose church was seven miles away, entered actively into the campaign. His men were ushers, his singers were in the choir, his workers zealous and untiring in their efforts to win others. He and his people invested largely in time, strength and money and within two weeks after the campaign closed nearly one hundred persons united with his church on profession of faith. And this pastor published a statement that the campaign was a great success. To the one object failure – to the other, a triumphant success. One used a hammer, the other a saw, draw your own conclusions.

As long as God gives me strength I will keep pounding away at the fortifications of sin and pointing men to Jesus Christ as the only way of Salvation, no matter who knocks.

Don’t worry about old John Barleycorn. He has been tried, convicted, sentenced by forty states and today he sits strapped in the chair waiting for the executioner to pull the lever. His time is about up. I’ve given him a few uppercuts myself during the past twenty-five years and you can write it down in your blue book that I’m getting ready to preach his funeral sermon and close with the doxology.

W.A. Sunday

Postcard shows Toledo welcomes Billy and company in April 1911

Colorized by owner.

Billy Sunday’s Toledo Campaign (April 9 – May 21, 1911)

Billy Sunday’s 1911 revival in Toledo, Ohio, was one of the most anticipated evangelistic events the city had ever seen. Running for six intense weeks—from April 9 to May 21—the campaign opened with extraordinary momentum. On opening Sunday alone, more than 30,000 people attended three services, immediately signaling the citywide interest and spiritual hunger surrounding Sunday’s arrival.

The revival was held in a massive temporary tabernacle measuring 160 by 220 feet, with seating for 7,000 people, plus an additional 1,000 seats in the choir loft. Night after night, the structure filled with working men and women, families, and curious onlookers drawn by Sunday’s reputation for plainspoken preaching, moral urgency, and energetic delivery.

Organizers initially hoped for 20,000 conversions, a figure reflecting Toledo’s size and the scale of the meetings. While that expectation proved optimistic, the final results were still remarkable: 7,323 people publicly professed conversion, surpassing Sunday’s previous record at New Castle. The response confirmed Toledo as one of the strongest campaigns of his early national prominence.

Financial support from the city was equally notable. Total offerings reached $14,423.58, breaking Sunday’s earlier giving record of $10,000 at New Castle. Newspapers emphasized that these contributions came largely from people of ordinary means, underscoring the grassroots character of Sunday’s appeal and the broad civic buy-in to the revival.

By the time the campaign concluded in late May, Toledo had experienced weeks of sustained attention on spiritual renewal, personal reform, and public morality. Though it fell short of early conversion projections, the Toledo campaign stood as a record-setting and influential moment in Billy Sunday’s rise as America’s most prominent evangelist of the Progressive Era.

Where was the ‘tabernacle’ site and location during the 1923 Billy Sunday revival in Louisville, Kentucky?

Billy used the newly constructed Kosair Auditorium for his Louisville revival meetings (April 22 – June 2).

” . . . during the six weeks of the revival to be held at the Kosair Auditorium, on Broadway between Floyd and Brook streets.” Source – newspaper

Now location of the 1922-23 Kosair Auditorium, adjacent to the Kosair Temple (now the Norton Research Institute).

The current Norton Research Institute was the original Kosair Temple, NOT the Auditorium. 224 E. Broadway (between Brook and Jackson Streets)

The Auditorium (Broadway between Floyd and Brook) pre-dated the Temple and likely served as a temporary venue while the Shrine built its new home a few blocks east (between Brook and Jackson).

The Courier-Journal. Mon, Apr 23, 1923 ·Page 1

The Winona Lake Billy Sunday Tabernacle was demolished in May 1992

I was living in Winona Lake in 1992 – attending Grace Theological Seminary – when the Billy Sunday Tabernacle was demolished. Knowing this was the last time anyone would see the sole remaining Sunday tabernacle in America, I took these pictures.

Coverage: The Indianapolis Star. Sun, May 17, 1992.

Who was Grace Saxe, C. 1913?

The Times Leader. Wed, Feb 19, 1913 ·Page 7

WITH BILLY SUNDAY. MISS GRACE SAXE, BIBLE INSTRUCTOR, HAS HAD INTERESTING CAREER

Miss Grace Saxe, who is with the Billy Sunday party, is a woman of wonderful ability and accomplishments. She is the bible instructor and organizes and teaches bible classes during the campaign.

Miss Saxe was in Egypt doing missionary work when Colonel Roosevelt was there and was sent up the Nile to meet him to take notes of his speeches which he made at the different mission stations. She was with him two weeks.

Miss Saxe, whose full name is Nettie Grace Saxe, was born and reared at Fort Scott, Kansas. When she was nine years of age her mother died. Her uncle, Colonel Chaddock, took her upon her father again marrying and from then on, as Miss Saxe says, she had no home.

She completed her education at the Kansas Normal College, at Fort Scott. Her brother, who conducted a business college, taught her stenography when she was nine years old, and when she left the normal college she became a court reporter in St. Louis. While reporting some meetings which Dr. A. B. Simpson was conducting at that time she became converted.

Desiring to know more about the bible, she took a course of bible study at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for two years, after which she joined the forces of Charles Alexander and Dr. Torrey. She was with the party during the evangelistic campaign through England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, where she taught the bible.

At Birmingham, England, she organized what is to-day the largest bible study class in the world, which numbers 4,500 men and women. For two years she conducted this class herself. Returning to this country she rested for a short time and then went to Egypt to do missionary work. While there the mission board cabled for her to go up the Nine to meet Colonel Roosevelt.

She later taught the missionaries at Cairo and soon went to Palestine, where she spent several months. From there she went to Damascus, going through Italy and France on her return to America. She joined the Sunday party two years ago.

Two Objects Aim of Every Big Revival, Grace Saxe, 1914 – Symbolism of the Pentateuch

Note: Grace Saxe was the lead Bible teacher for Billy Sunday from 1911 – 1921.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fri, Jan 30, 1914 ·Page 7

Miss Grace Saxe Compares Life of Old Israelites With That of Christian Today.

There is a remarkable correspondence between the experiences of the chosen people of Israel and of the saved soul,” said Miss Grace Saxe yesterday afternoon before her Bible class in the tabernacle. Miss Saxe has begun a study of the books of the Bible, their arrangements and their significance and her class which occupies the platform at the close of the afternoon meeting in the tabernacle fills every seat. Miss Saxe said:

The symbolism of the Pentateuch is remarkable. No less remarkable is the order of these first five books. Genesis is the book of beginnings and yet before it closes it shows the beginning of the entrance of sin. Exodus is the book of redemption symbolized by the release from bondage in Egypt. Leviticus is the book of worship showing the experience of redemption. Numbers, the book of journeying the experiences of the redeemed from day to day, while Deuteronomy is the book of instruction to the redeemed, the plan of regeneration.

Note the steps from Egypt, through the Wilderness to Canaan. Egypt typifies the world, Satan’s domain; the Wilderness, the place of the unsurrendered to God, while Canaan symbolizes the spirit-filled, spirit-controlled Christian life.

We are asked where we get our authority for this comparison of the life of the Israelites and the life of the Christian. You will find it in I Cor. 10:4.

As the Israelites left Egypt and wandered for 40 years in the Wilderness there is one thing I want you to note, that when they looked back toward Egypt they longed for the fish, the melons, cucumbers, leeks, onions and garlic. Each stage of longing was lower, stronger and ranker. The picture is exact in every particular.

Every great revival has two objects. The first is to get people to obey God, to come out for Him. That is the first great crisis. The second object is to get the wilderness Christians to take a second step into the promised land, the land of Canaan, instead of wandering and drifting about. This is the second great crisis.

Miss Saxe will continue her study of the books of the Bible each afternoon at the close of the afternoon meeting. On Saturday afternoon of next week she will outline a plan for neighborhood Bible classes to continue after the close of the present Sunday meetings.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fri, Jan 30, 1914 ·Page 7

Faith in the Efficacy of Prayer, April 1917 – importance of prayer

The Kansas City Star. Sun, Apr 01, 1917 ·Page 41

The first important thing was to get the whole Christian population of the city to praying for the success of the campaign. Prayer is the one great secret of Billy Sunday’s success, he says himself. He prays without ceasing. The members of his party pray always. Every difficulty that arises is a subject of prayer. If some preacher declines to take part in the revival they pray for him and keep on praying. They pray for little things and big things. Billy catches cold; the whole party prays for him. His voice gets husky; they all begin praying. There is indecision as to which city the next campaign would better be held in; Billy and his party begin praying to be led aright. It is prayer, prayer, prayer, constantly.

And so, great maps of New York were hung upon the wall at headquarters. Each church and school was marked with a tack, a redheaded tack denoting a Methodist church, a blue tack a Baptist church, and so on. Then all of Greater New York was divided into districts and the work of prayer began.

An executive committee was named with twenty-seven men on it, each one a hustler. John D. Rockefeller jr. and William Jay Schieffelin, two of the richest men in New York, are on the committee, and both are actively working.