Campaign – Page 2 – Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935)

The summer Billy Sunday found the platform: 1903

A year of small towns, growing purses, and the quiet beginning of the Chautauqua decade that would change everything.

If 1902 was the year Billy Sunday became Billy Sunday, then 1903 was the year he started learning what kind of Billy Sunday he was going to be. The previous year had handed him three breakthroughs: a documented preaching style, a working business model, and a public conversation about whether he might be the next Moody. 1903 was the year he had to do something with all of that.

By the documented record, he held only seven multi-week campaigns and Chautauqua appearances that year — a smaller schedule than 1902. But every one of them mattered, and one of them, a single afternoon talk in September, opened the door to the decade-long platform run that would carry him from regional tent revivalist to national headliner.

Osceola and Marengo: the work continues

The year opened where the previous one had ended — in a small Illinois town, in cold weather, in a four-week revival campaign. At Osceola, between January and February, Sunday drew a $710 purse against $1,100 in campaign expenses and recorded 410 conversions. The local paper noted that he was making “several times over” the salary of a professional baseball player. The Leon Journal-Reporter put a finer point on it in mid-January: he was “attracting enormous congregations.”

From there to Marengo, Illinois in March, where something quietly remarkable happened on Sunday, March 29. Billy preached to men only. Helen Sunday preached to women only. Sixty converts came forward that day across the two services.

Helen had been managing the Sunday household for years, and she would eventually become her husband’s chief organizational lieutenant on the road. But March 29, 1903 is, as far as the curated newspaper record shows, one of the earliest documented occasions when she stepped into a public preaching role of her own. The Belvidere Daily Republican noted it without much fanfare. Three years later, when she announced she would join Billy on the campaign trail full-time, she described her future role as taking “charge of women Bible classes, organizing girl Bible classes and giving personal care to converted persons.” Marengo 1903 was the prototype. She had already been doing it.

Centerville: a town transformed

The defining revival of 1903 came in June at Centerville, Iowa — a small county seat in the southern Iowa coalfields. Sunday preached there for just over two weeks, between June 14 and June 30, and the impact on the town was, by every contemporary measure, immense.

851 conversions across the campaign. 615 of them came in the final week. 219 on Sunday, June 28 alone. 230 on the closing night, June 30. The crowds were enormous for a town that size. On June 29 Sunday preached to 1,500 people, some of whom had driven more than twenty miles to be there. At the men-only meeting earlier in the campaign, 1,200 men came; 155 of them were converted in a single service. Sunday’s purse for the two-week run was $1,500.

But the more telling numbers came after he left town. The Evening Times-Republican reported on July 11 that 428 new church members had joined Centerville’s congregations as a direct result of the revival. First United Methodist alone took in 67. One Centerville church’s regular weekly offering more than doubled in the weeks after Sunday’s departure. Almost every denomination in town began discussing new building plans to accommodate the new attendance. And on July 23, the Oskaloosa Herald reported that a brand new Centerville YMCA had been founded with 150 members — expanding to 250 within a few days.

This was the model working at full force. A two-week campaign generating not just conversions but durable institutional change — new church members, new buildings under discussion, a new YMCA chapter. The Centerville revival also produced one of the period’s most quotable Sunday biographical glimpses. Speaking with a reporter from the Evening Times-Republican on June 26, Sunday described his own childhood: he had been “raised in an infidel neighborhood up in Story County. His grandfather was an infidel and never went to church. Cursings and damnings were heard on all hands.” It is the kind of personal-origin detail that rarely surfaces in his own words elsewhere.

There was also a political dimension. During the Centerville campaign, more than 100 attendees withdrew their names from a local saloon-approval petition — early evidence that Sunday’s revivals were not just spiritual events but civic interventions that reshaped local temperance politics. Toward the close of the campaign Sunday ordered a new tent capable of seating 2,000 people. The local press, with characteristic dry wit, observed that he “proposes that no guilty man escape.”

“The splendid success which has been achieved by “Billy” Sunday at Centerville and at other points in Iowa as an evangelist is contradictory to the conclusions of those who have contended that revivals are a thing of the past and no longer efficacious. They are as effective now as they ever have been, with this difference that a larger share of ability and personality is required to influence the unsaved and bring them to repentance and salvation. People are wider read and more intelligent than they were. A higher order of clerical ability is exacted, and the church is supplying it. Strong, forceful, able and broad-minded evangelists are in greater demand that at any time heretofore and are invariably as successful in winning converts to Christianity as they ever have been.”

– The Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) · Wed, Jul 8, 1903 · Page 4.

The summer turn

The most consequential thing Sunday did in 1903 occurred in August and September. He took his first Chautauqua bookings.

On August 9 he appeared at Bloomington, Illinois — a single date on the Bloomington Chautauqua program. On September 7 he appeared at Ottawa, Illinois, where the Dwight Star and Herald reported that his subject was a denunciation of two-faced church gossipers. Both engagements were modest by the standards he would soon set. But both put him onto the summer platform circuit that would, by 1909, be paying him $43,000 a year and putting him in front of audiences of 8,000 to 15,000 in a single afternoon.

The Chautauqua movement in 1903 was already a national institution. Each summer, thousands of small Midwestern towns hosted ten-day Chautauqua assemblies under canvas — featuring lectures, music, religious programming, scientific demonstrations, and visiting speakers. The platform was hungry for evangelists who could draw a crowd without alienating the family-friendly audience. Sunday’s blend of muscular preaching, ex-baseball-player charisma, and crowd-tested theatricality turned out to be exactly what the format wanted.

A 1903 Sunday Chautauqua appearance was just a single afternoon talk — a long way from the multi-week revival campaigns that had been his core work. But the summer tour had one advantage that the revival circuit did not: scale. A single revival meant one town for a month. A single Chautauqua summer meant a dozen towns in three months, each with its own audience, its own newspaper coverage, and its own check. By September of 1903, Sunday had taken the first steps onto a platform that would carry him through the next decade.

Carthage: a new high

The fall return to revival work brought Sunday to Carthage, Illinois, where he preached from October through November 1 in a pole-and-canvas tabernacle built near the town square by local volunteers. His purse for the month-long campaign was $2,100 — at the time, the largest he had ever received. The Muncie Star Press flagged this as an editor’s note, treating the figure as newsworthy in its own right.

Three years later, in March 1906, the Mattoon Journal Gazette and Times-Courier would publish a stickiness analysis of Sunday’s earlier revivals — looking at how many of his converts remained in the faith years after the campaigns ended. Carthage came in at 80 percent still “living the new life” three years later. It was one of the strongest results in the entire study.

For a 41-year-old evangelist still mostly working the small-town Midwest circuit, the $2,100 Carthage purse was a meaningful threshold. The previous high had been Fairmount’s $1,600 the prior spring. Carthage put Sunday’s compensation on a clear trajectory — by 1907 he would routinely draw $6,000 purses, by 1909 over $10,000 — and the fact that the Muncie paper flagged the figure as “largest ever” tells us the regional press was already keeping score.

What 1903 was for

It is tempting to read 1903 as a quiet year. Only seven documented engagements survive in the curated archive, none of them generated the kind of national press coverage Sunday’s 1902 ministry totals had attracted, and the Chautauqua bookings looked at the time like modest summer side work. The story of 1903, if you were skimming the year for headlines, is thinner than 1902 on its face.

But three things happened in 1903 that mattered more than the headline count suggests, and each one set up something that would define Sunday’s career for the next decade.

Centerville proved the institutional model worked. The 1902 Fairmount campaign had shown that the stock-company funding mechanism could work. Centerville, a year later, showed that the durable institutional effects — new church members, new buildings, new YMCA chapters, lasting political consequences — were not flukes. Sunday’s revivals were not just emotional events. They were civic re-engineering exercises that small towns wanted and would pay for.

Carthage put Sunday’s earnings on a new escalator. $2,100 in a single month, on a model where the local stock company underwrote expenses and the closing collection went to Sunday personally, was no longer a regional curiosity. It was the kind of money that could only come from a campaign delivering real economic value to a town and its churches. By the end of 1903 Sunday was no longer asking communities whether they could afford to host him. He was being courted.

Bloomington and Ottawa opened the Chautauqua door. Two modest summer engagements in 1903. Twenty Chautauqua appearances in 1906. Eighty-six lectures in 1907. The Chautauqua decade — the platform run that would make Sunday a national-newspaper name well before the urban tabernacle campaigns of the 1910s — began with those two unassuming afternoons. Without 1903 there is no 1907. Without 1907 there is no 1909 Spokane, no Patterson Springs $3,600 record, no first meeting with Homer Rodeheaver at Winfield, Kansas.

The 1902 narrative had been about emergence — about a 40-year-old preacher publicly figuring out who he was. The 1903 narrative is harder to see because the changes are quieter. But by the time Sunday closed his Carrollton, Illinois campaign in November and moved on to start the Jefferson, Iowa campaign in mid-December, the trajectory of his ministry was no longer in question. The next ten years were already implied in the platforms he had just learned how to stand on.

The Chautauqua had a hold of him now. So did the small-town Midwest. And so, increasingly, did the watching national press.

All dates, figures, purse amounts, conversion counts, and contemporary press quotations in this post are drawn from the Sunday Master Speaking List, an ongoing research database compiled from period newspapers and archival sources, 2025–2026.

How to cite this post

Chicago: McNutt, Kraig. “The Summer Billy Sunday Found the Platform: 1903.” Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862–1935), June 7, 2026. https://evangelistbillysunday.com/2026/06/07/the-summer-billy-sunday-found-the-platform-1903/.

MLA: McNutt, Kraig. “The Summer Billy Sunday Found the Platform: 1903.” Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862–1935), 7 June 2026, evangelistbillysunday.com/2026/06/07/the-summer-billy-sunday-found-the-platform-1903/.

APA: McNutt, K. (2026, June 7). The summer Billy Sunday found the platform: 1903. Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862–1935). https://evangelistbillysunday.com/2026/06/07/the-summer-billy-sunday-found-the-platform-1903/

Turabian: McNutt, Kraig. “The Summer Billy Sunday Found the Platform: 1903.” Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862–1935). June 7, 2026. https://evangelistbillysunday.com/2026/06/07/the-summer-billy-sunday-found-the-platform-1903/.

REVIVALS GREW BY LITTLE

THE YEARS HAVE SHOWN A DEVELOPMENT IN SUNDAY’S METHODS.

Ed., the following is an exact reprint from a 1916 article.

Early Audiences Found Nothing Spectacular in the Sermons of the Revivalist, and Towns of 10,000 Were the Limit Then.

There is nothing “mushroom” in the growth of the Billy Sunday meetings. The gradual development of Sunday’s revival methods was recalled today to Ma Sunday by an old clipping from The Star of July 28, 1902.

The clipping was a reprint from the Brooklyn Eagle and it mentioned the fact that Sunday had made the large sum of $12,000 in a year. It said:

Mr. Sunday is not mercenary and he thinks more of converts than he does of money. He mentioned his Pitts to the interviewer simply because he had been asked if it had not been something in the start of a religious revival from the base salary of an American baseball player to the supreme income of a modern athlete and evangelist.

“God has been truly good to us,” was Mr. Sunday’s reply.

“We started our work in Bellingham at $1,500 for the same length of time. Farmington and other places were small, but they are mostly made up of millionaires, we drew $800 in thirty days.”

Ma Sunday smiled over it.

“We certainly would not have tackled Kansas City or Boston or New York City in those days,” she said.

“We used to think that the town of ten thousand population was our limit. We felt that was as large as we could handle and to get above that would perhaps mean a failure. Then we began including the town of twenty thousand. All the time we were gradually adding to our party and building larger tabernacles, until here we are and New York City is in sight with a tabernacle seating twenty-five thousand.”

Fourteen years have also made changes in other ways, as the following extract from the same clipping shows:

Mr. Sunday’s revival methods are all in fashion distinctive to unique. No Sunday jumping, no frenzy and no hysterics among the converts at his meetings. He talks to his congregation in a sane and reasonable fashion. When he has them convinced that they are a pretty bad lot he asks them to come to the front. There are no mourner’s benches. Instead, there are chairs upon which to invite the penitents to sit while he circulates among them and talks to them individually. He takes the name of each subject and turns him over to the pastor of the denomination for which he expresses a preference and refuses to be longer responsible for his new charge. Sometimes it is estimated with no determination.

His plan is to stay a month in each place. For the first two weeks he does not “give” the invitation. He tells the people funny stories and amuses them with his strange and bizarre methods of preaching. The third week he devotes to the subject of sin as he has found it in the experience of whom he is talking. The fourth week he seeks the souls of the sinners and the penitents.

The singer is a tall, well dressed young chap, 40 years old, with the look of a man much younger. It is helpful he wears such neat clothing, for although he has no pretensions to preaching power, it is his warm, personal, but because he makes him different from other preachers.

KC Star. May 9, 1916 (5)

The Kansas City Star Tue, May 09, 1916 · Page 5

Competing for the Crowd: What Else Philadelphia Could Do in 1915

When Billy Sunday arrived in Philadelphia in early 1915, he stepped into a city alive with options.

This wasn’t a spiritually quiet moment in American life—it was a crowded marketplace of attention. Every night, Philadelphians could choose where to go, what to watch, and how to spend their time. Entertainment was not scarce; it was everywhere. And much of it was designed to delight, distract, and hold an audience far more comfortably than a hard-hitting revival sermon.

That’s what makes Sunday’s campaign so compelling.

He didn’t draw crowds because there was nothing else to do.
He drew crowds in spite of everything else there was to do.

Let’s step into that world.

The Bright Lights of the Theatre

Philadelphia had a thriving theatre scene—serious plays, comedies, and traveling productions that brought a touch of Broadway to the city. These venues were polished and respectable, often appealing to middle- and upper-class audiences.

An evening at the theatre meant dressing well, sitting in a structured setting, and watching trained actors perform carefully scripted stories. It was entertainment with dignity—refined, cultural, and often expensive.

The theatre still carried prestige in 1915, but it was no longer the only game in town.

Vaudeville: Fast, Funny, and Everywhere

If theatre was refined, vaudeville was electric.

Vaudeville shows were built on variety—comedians, singers, dancers, acrobats, magicians—all packed into a single program. The pace was quick, the tone was lively, and the appeal was broad.

For many working-class and middle-class Philadelphians, vaudeville was the go-to night out. It was affordable, constantly changing, and full of energy. No two shows were exactly alike, and that unpredictability kept audiences coming back.

In 1915, vaudeville was at or near its peak. It wasn’t just popular—it was a cultural force.

The Rise of the Photoplay

And then there were the movies—still new, still evolving, but already reshaping the landscape.

They were called photoplays, and by 1915 they were drawing massive crowds. For just a few cents, people could step into a darkened theater and be transported into another world through silent film.

That same year saw the release of The Birth of a Nation, a film that demonstrated just how powerful and immersive cinema could be.

Movies had three advantages that made them unstoppable:

They were cheap
They were accessible
They were constantly changing

In many ways, they represented the future of entertainment—and people knew it.

Music, Dance, and the Pull of the Nightlife

For younger audiences especially, entertainment wasn’t just about watching—it was about participating.

Dance halls and social clubs offered ragtime music, lively crowds, and a chance to be part of the action. These venues were social, energetic, and often stretched late into the night.

They were also controversial.

Revivalists like Billy Sunday frequently warned against the moral dangers of dance halls, seeing them as places where discipline gave way to impulse. But for many in the city, they were simply where life felt most alive.

Traveling Shows and Big-Tent Spectacle

Even in a major city, the draw of spectacle remained strong.

Circuses, traveling shows, and Chautauqua events brought something different—large-scale experiences that combined entertainment, education, and wonder. Whether it was a circus parade or a lecture under a tent, these events added to the sense that something exciting was always happening just around the corner.

They were part of the cultural fabric, especially for families and those looking for something beyond the everyday.

And Then… There Was the Tabernacle

Into that world stepped Billy Sunday.

No velvet curtains.
No orchestra.
No stagecraft.

Just a rough wooden tabernacle, a sawdust-covered floor, and a preacher who spoke with urgency and conviction.

And yet—night after night—people came.

Why?

Because Sunday offered something none of the others could.

The theatre entertained.
Vaudeville amused.
Movies captivated.
Dance halls energized.

But Sunday confronted.

He spoke about sin, purpose, eternity, and the need for decision. His meetings were not passive experiences. They demanded a response.

The Real Story

The real story of Philadelphia in 1915 is not just that Billy Sunday drew crowds.

It’s that he drew them in the middle of one of the most competitive entertainment environments America had ever seen.

Every night, people made a choice.

They could laugh, watch, dance, or be distracted.
Or they could walk into a wooden tabernacle and be challenged.

And tens of thousands chose the latter.

That’s not just revival.

That’s a man—and a message—breaking through the noise of an entire culture.

Major national and world events going on during the Jan-March 1915 Philadelphia campaign?

Article curated by AI, examining period newspapers, with human oversight.

A City on the Edge: The World Behind Billy Sunday’s Philadelphia Campaign (Jan–Mar 1915)

When Billy Sunday stepped into Philadelphia on January 3, 1915, he didn’t enter a quiet city.

He stepped into a world already under strain.

To understand the power of that campaign—why thousands poured into the tabernacle, why his words landed with such force—you have to look beyond the sawdust trail and into the broader setting. Because what was happening outside the tabernacle made what happened inside feel urgent, even necessary.

A World at War—But Not Yet America’s

By early 1915, Europe was already bleeding.

What had begun in the summer of 1914 as a war of movement had hardened into something far more brutal. The Western Front was frozen in place. Soldiers lived in trenches carved into mud and misery. Artillery thundered day and night. Machine guns cut down advances before they began. The casualty lists grew longer by the week.

And in February 1915, something changed that Americans could not ignore: Germany declared the waters around Great Britain a war zone. Submarines—U-boats—would strike without warning.

For the first time, the war felt like it might reach across the Atlantic.

America was still neutral. But no one felt untouched.

A Nation Holding Its Breath

Under President Woodrow Wilson, the United States tried to maintain distance. Officially, this was not our war.

But neutrality is easier to declare than to feel.

Every day, newspapers carried headlines from Europe. Americans followed the movements of armies, the sinking of ships, the warnings issued to neutral nations. Trade tied the U.S. to the Allies. American goods crossed the ocean. American lives traveled those same routes.

The question lingered, unspoken but persistent:

How long can we stay out of this?

There was no clear answer—only a growing sense that the ground was shifting.

Prosperity with a Shadow

At the same time, the American economy was waking up.

Factories were busy. Orders increased. Production surged. War in Europe meant demand for American goods—steel, machinery, supplies.

Philadelphia, an industrial powerhouse, felt it.

But prosperity came with questions.

Was America simply helping… or quietly profiting from the suffering overseas? Could a nation grow rich while the world burned?

These weren’t always spoken out loud. But they were felt.

And men like Billy Sunday had a way of bringing those quiet tensions into the open.

A Moral Movement Finding Its Voice

This was also a moment when moral reform was cresting.

The temperance movement was no longer a fringe cause. The Anti-Saloon League had become a powerful national force. States were beginning to go dry. The conversation about alcohol, vice, and public morality was moving from pulpits into politics.

Sunday did not arrive in Philadelphia as a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

He arrived as a leading voice in a growing chorus.

His attacks on the saloon, his calls for personal repentance, his insistence on moral clarity—they resonated because the ground had already been prepared.

The Pressure of the Modern City

Philadelphia in 1915 was a city alive with motion—and tension.

Immigrants poured into neighborhoods already crowded. Industry demanded long hours and offered uncertain stability. Streets were full. Lives were busy. The pace was relentless.

And beneath it all was something harder to measure:

A kind of spiritual restlessness.

People were working, striving, building—but many sensed something was missing. The old certainties felt less certain. The future felt unclear.

It is no accident that revival fires so often burn brightest in moments like these.

Why It All Matters

Billy Sunday’s Philadelphia campaign did not happen in isolation.

It unfolded in a world:

unsettled by war
uncertain about the future
prospering, but uneasy
crowded, busy, and spiritually searching

When Sunday preached about sin, judgment, repentance, and decision, he was not introducing new concerns.

He was naming what people were already feeling.

And that is why they came.

A Final Word

If you want to understand the Philadelphia campaign, don’t start with the tabernacle.

Start with the world outside it.

Because Billy Sunday did not create the urgency of that moment—he stepped into it, gave it language, and called a city to respond.

When is a revival needed? – Billy Sunday

Colorized picture from 1915. This was Billy’s favorite picture at the time.

“A revival is needed when the worldly spirit is in the church of God. It isn’t necessary to do something grossly inconsistent. A ship is all right in the sea, but all wrong when the sea is in her. The church of God is all right in the world, but all wrong when the world is in the church. Some people come to church on Sunday morning and on Monday morning they take a header into the world and the church never sees them again until Sunday morning. They squat and take up a little space in the pew and stay there and put a little money on the plate, but you never see them again until Sunday morning. I tell you, I believe half of the church members could die and the church wouldn’t lose anything of its spiritual force; it would lose them in numbers, but it wouldn’t lose anything in spiritual power.

I tell you, my friends, we need a panic in religion; the world don’t need informing; it needs reforming. We are going to the devil over culture clubs, as if the world needed informing; it don’t need anything of the kind. There are people who go to church and go to a certain denomination because their wife goes there. They got their religion and their property in their name. They go to that church.”

Cited in: Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. January 6, 1915:6.

From a sermon on A Defense of Revivals, from Habakkuk 3:2. January 5, 1915. Philadelphia.

His power: what is it?

Cited in: The Philadelphia Evening Ledger. January 5, 1915:5. – William Rader

Billy Sunday is not easily defined. Power conceals its secret. Psychologists would call it hypnotism; theologians, the power of the spirit; the ethical teacher, the gift of truth; the dramatist, the art of the player; while others declare:

His strength is as the strength of ten,
Because his heart is pure.

Billy Sunday is a good actor. Each sermon is carefully prepared, and some of it read from manuscript. Certain climaxes are illustrated. At one point he slides to a base; at another, kneels, or leaps upon the pulpit desk, or smashes a chair to pieces. Edward Everett did not more carefully prepare a speech with its proper gestures than does this evangelist build his sermons. The local color with which he decorates his main thought is taken from the city in which he speaks.

His imagination interested me. Speaking on “The Grenadier,” the consideration of his theme invited the use of the imagination, and he gave it full play. The sermon was an application of military attributes to practical life, a rebuke to the “wind-jammer” of the prayer meeting, and an appeal to the man who has taken an oath to be good to go out and honor it. He assailed the “saphead” who criticises the Church, and the description he gave of Daniel in the lion’s den and of the head of John the Baptist on a charger will not be forgotten.

I confess to a liking for his so-called slang. Most of it is plain English with a punch in it. It is the punch which preachers and editors and people who use words generally lack. Words are like shot, made to strike, and especially when used to influence great bodies of people. It is refreshing to hear a man say what he thinks and say it as he pleases—a thing most public men signally fail to do.

What a revival does? – Billy Sunday

Cited in: The Evening Public Ledger. January 5, 1915: 5.

“What is a revival? Now listen to me. A revival does two things. First, it returns the church from her backsliding; and, second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the church today!

“I suppose the people here are pretty fair representatives of the church of God, and if everybody did what you do there would never be a revival. Suppose I did no more than you do, then no people would ever be converted through my efforts; I would fold my arms and rust out. A revival helps to bring the unsaved to Jesus Christ.

“God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the church. He never intended that the saloons should walk roughshod over Christianity. And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don’t know me yet.

“I will cram it down their throats in this town for the miserable lies they hurl against me up and down the streets of this city. Don’t you forget it. You bet your life. You bet, and they will get it.

“When is a revival needed? When the individuals are careless and unconcerned. If the church was down on her face in prayer they would be more concerned with the fellow outside. The church has degenerated into a third-rate amusement joint with religion left out.

“When is a revival needed? When carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep. It is must the duty of the church to awaken and work and labor for the men and women of this city as it is the duty of the fire department to arouse when the call sounds. What would you think of the fire department of Philadelphia if it slept while the town burned? You would condemn it and I will condemn you if you sleep and let men and women go to hell. It is just as much your business to be awake. The church of God is asleep today; it is turned into a dormitory, and has taken the devil’s opiates.”

HIT TYPEWRITER KEYS FOR PASTOR; THEN “HIT TRAIL”

Cited from: The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. January 2, 1915:3.

Miss Grace Saxe, “Billy” Sunday’s Prayer Meeting Organizer, Tells of Her Conversion.

“Billy” Sunday’s right-hand woman, whose other name is Miss Grace Saxe, is just as much a woman as though she didn’t hold one of the most important positions in the whole Sunday organization, a position which might make even a man forget all else but the responsibilities of his work.

For one of the very first things she did on arriving in Philadelphia several days in advance of the opening of the campaign was to launch forth on an energetic shopping tour.

“I simply had to have some pretty clothes to wear, to conduct my meetings,” she said, smiling nervously, at “Billy” Sunday’s home, 1914 Spring Garden street, happy, but exhausted, at the termination of her first work in Philadelphia.

Miss Saxe is the person whom Mr. Sunday has selected for the very vital work of organizing the neighborhood prayer meetings in the various cities where the revivals are conducted, and it is her particular duty to bring religion into as many of the private homes as she can possibly get into touch with and to make it a permanent factor of those homes.

“Our work would be a very poor thing indeed,” she said earnestly, “if we worked at these people up to a state of high religious fervor only to let them drop back again and cool off soon after the campaign was over.”

TELLS OF HER CONVERSION

“Although the revivals have not yet started, I cannot help feeling that the way Philadelphia has received us has been nothing short of magnificent. Already 5000 homes have been thrown open to these prayer meetings and more than 15,000 volunteers have come forward and signified their intention of fostering these meetings permanently and keeping the spirit of Christ in the home indefinitely.

“One phase of the work that I am particularly interested in is teaching people how to read the Bible. There are many who have a great desire to study the Book of God, but who do not know how to go about it, and organizing teaching, high school girls and women in city houses, into Bible classes is my chief duty.

Miss Saxe’s career has been an interesting one. Born in Iowa, she “entered” St. Louis to accept a position as court stenographer, and it was while she was energetically hitting the keys in the city that something occurred which, to use her own expression, “made her see the light.”

“Up until that time,” she said, a little shamefacedly, “I was rather an unregenerate creature. I used to come to town in Lyons, Dr. A. B. Simpson came to town and I was engaged to go and take down in shorthand a series of his lectures. There were about ten of them, and in addition to having to hear them I also had to go all over them again, transcribing them on the typewriter.

“TURNS DOWN” ROOSEVELT

“They made me think, and soon after I began a very careful study of the Bible. Later on I was engaged to work with the Rev. Dwight L. Moody, of Chicago, and after that I traveled abroad with Torrey and Alexander. By that time the work of making a Christian out of me was completed.

“Later on I happened to be in Egypt taking a little vacation when I received a request to go up the Nile and meet Mr. Roosevelt at Luxor, there to take down some of his lectures, but I found I was spoiled for that sort of thing. I had become so interested in religious work that nothing else seemed to satisfy, and it was soon after this that I accepted Mr. Sunday’s offer to become a member of his organization, and have worked with him ever since.”

Miss Saxe has the calm, placid Madonna-like face of one who is at peace with the world and herself.

“The test of his wonderful work is in the results that he gets. Day after day hundreds of testimonials come in which show the lasting conversions that he is responsible for.

“Only the other day a man sent a letter from Waterloo, Iowa, where a revival was conducted some three years ago, saying that he was thankful for the change that had been brought about in him, that he was willing even to have his name used if other conversions might be effected thereby.

“For 30 years this Johnny Bates had been a confirmed drunkard. His wife got disgusted and divorced him, his children grew away from him and he went down into the very depths. Three years ago he hit the sawdust trail and since then has never touched a drop. He now holds a splendid lucrative position and his wife has remarried him. That is but one of the many cases which testify to the indisputably good work that Mr. Sunday is doing.”

Cited from: The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. January 2, 1915:3.

When a Revival Outdrew the State Fair: Omaha, 1915

In the fall of 1915, Nebraska found itself hosting two of the largest public gatherings in its history.

One was expected.
The other was not.

In Lincoln, the Nebraska State Fair was in full swing. Newspaper headlines called it “the greatest ever held.” Despite rain and poor weather early in the week, crowds poured through the gates. By the time it ended, total attendance reached 180,767—a record-setting year. The fairgrounds were packed with machinery exhibits, livestock judging, aerial shows, wrestling matches, and the familiar buzz of a state coming together for its biggest annual spectacle.

It was, by every measure, a success.

But sixty miles away, something far more remarkable was unfolding.

In Omaha, a temporary wooden tabernacle had been erected for evangelist Billy Sunday. There were no rides. No prize livestock. No grandstand attractions. Just sawdust, benches, a pulpit—and a preacher.

Yet by the time Sunday’s campaign ended, the numbers told a different story.

The revival recorded approximately 930,000 total attendees across its six weeks of meetings. Of those, nearly 795,000 passed through the tabernacle itself. More than 13,000 people walked the “sawdust trail,” publicly declaring their decision for Christ.

Let that sink in.

The largest civic event in the state drew just over 180,000 people in a week.
Billy Sunday’s revival drew over five times that number (in six weeks total).

The 1915 Omaha Billy Sunday revival, bookstore.

And it wasn’t confined to a single venue or moment. The revival spread throughout the city:

Over 2,100 cottage prayer meetings during the campaign
Tens of thousands attending women’s meetings, Bible classes, and noon gatherings
Business leaders, factory workers, students, and families all pulled into its orbit

This was not simply a series of sermons. It was a citywide movement.

The contrast is striking. The State Fair represented the best of Nebraska’s agriculture, industry, and entertainment. It was planned, promoted, and expected to succeed.

Sunday’s revival, on the other hand, was built on something less tangible but far more powerful—a shared spiritual hunger that transcended social boundaries.

For a brief moment in 1915, Omaha became the epicenter of something larger than spectacle. Larger than tradition. Larger even than the state’s greatest annual event.

The fairgrounds would empty. The tabernacle would be torn down.

But for those who were there, the memory remained:

A season when the crowds came—not for entertainment—but for transformation.

Sources: curated from Omaha newspapers from 1915.

When “Ma” Sunday Called Them Forward, c.1915

There are moments in the Sunday campaigns that feel almost hidden in the shadow of Billy’s larger-than-life presence—but when you find them, they reveal something just as powerful.

One such moment came during a women-only meeting led by “Ma” Sunday.

The tabernacle was full—some 6,000 to 7,000 gathered—but this was a different kind of service. No booming theatrics. No sawdust-charged bravado. Instead, there was a quieter, deeply personal appeal.

And when she called them forward, 115 women and girls rose and walked the aisle.

A Different Kind of “Trail-Hitting”

The newspapers called it a “replica” of Billy’s famous trail-hitting—but it wasn’t quite the same.

There was a tenderness to it. And, at first, a bit of confusion.

Many of the women thought they were simply going forward to greet Mrs. Sunday—to shake her hand, to thank her, to meet her. They came quickly, almost instinctively, forming what one observer described as a “bee-line” down the aisle.

It took a firm voice from Mrs. Asher, one of the Sunday team, to steady the moment:

This is not a reception line. This is for those who want to be saved.

And just like that, the tone shifted.

Faces in the Crowd

The reports linger on the people—and that’s where the story lives.

A housemaid, still in her work attire, came forward and clasped Mrs. Sunday’s hand, covering it with kisses.

A weeping mother walked the aisle with her small son, alongside her grown daughter.

Two young girls, barely ten years old, came arm in arm.

High school girls stepped forward carrying their school pennants.

Even the choir—singing hymn after hymn—was visibly moved, some of them weeping as they sang.

This wasn’t spectacle. It was personal, family-bound, deeply human.

Her Message: Personal Service

If Billy Sunday’s sermons often thundered, Ma Sunday’s message pressed inward.

She didn’t just call women to come forward—she called them to act.

Make a prayer list.
Win at least one person to Christ.
Take responsibility for the spiritual lives around you.

Her appeal was practical, almost methodical—but never cold. It was rooted in experience, shaped by her own life, and delivered with a kind of plainspoken honesty.

At one point, she reflected on her upbringing—rigid, formal, spiritually lifeless—and contrasted it with her determination to move forward anyway:

I was going to bust.

It’s the kind of line that doesn’t sound polished—but it lands.

Tears—and Resolve

Perhaps the most telling moment came when she addressed women with unsaved husbands and children.

Many of them broke down.

The article notes they wept bitterly.

This wasn’t abstract theology. This was eternity pressing into the home.

And Ma Sunday didn’t leave it there. She pointed them toward action, toward prayer, toward persistence.

She even set her sights on the next gathering—calling for a packed house of mothers and grandmothers, marked by a simple white flower.

The Broader Picture

What we see here is something easy to miss if we focus only on Billy:

The Sunday campaigns were not a one-man operation.

They were a network of voices, and Ma Sunday’s was essential—especially among women. Her meetings didn’t mirror Billy’s so much as complement them.

Where he confronted, she invited.
Where he thundered, she persuaded.
Where he called for decision, she called for ongoing service.

And in doing so, she mobilized an entire segment of the revival that might otherwise have remained on the margins.

Final Reflection

In the end, the numbers—115 responding—tell only part of the story.

What matters more is what those women carried home with them:

A renewed sense of responsibility
A burden for their families
A call to personal witness

Ma Sunday didn’t just ask them to walk an aisle.

She asked them to live differently when they walked back out.

And for many of them, that’s where the real revival began.

Source: The Omaha Daily Bee, Sept 20, 1915:1