Billy Sunday Comes to Wheeling

by Kate Quinn
April 10, 2007

For weeks the people of Wheeling had been excited at the prospect of a visit from the most famous evangelist in the country, the one and only Billy Sunday. In just four days they had built a tabernacle to assure his attendance, prayer meetings had been held in homes, and the churches had canceled all services in February so that everyone could attend. The newspapers fanned the flames by publishing word of his successful campaign in Canton, Ohio where thousands had walked the “sawdust trail”. Who was this messiah so eagerly anticipated by the lowly and elite of Wheeling in 1912?

William Ashley Sunday, was born in 1862, the son of a Union soldier who died five weeks after the birth of his youngest son. At the age of ten, Billy was sent with his older brother to live at the Soldiers’ Orphans Home in Glenwood, Iowa where he got a decent primary education and realized he had some natural athletic ability. By fourteen he was working as a farmhand and attended high school although he never graduated. Sunday was recruited for a fire brigade baseball team and in 1883 was signed by the Chicago White Stockings, the defending National League champions.

Popular with the fans, and known for his speed in running bases, Sunday played right field and was the team’s business manager making travel arrangements for the team and entrusted with thousands of dollars in cash. In 1888, Sunday played for the Pittsburgh Alleghenies as the center fielder and became famous for his ability to steal bases. Having no money to meet its payroll, the team traded Sunday to the Philadelphia Phillies for two players and $1000 in cash.

In 1891 Sunday turned down a $5,000 a year position with Cincinnati’s team in order to work for the Chicago YMCA as an Assistant Secretary at $83 per month. He had been converted in 1886 and began attending the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church where he met and married Helen “Nell” Thompson, daughter of the owner of one of Chicago’s largest dairy products businesses.

As an assistant to J. Wilbur Chapman, in 1893, Billy Sunday learned the intricacies of being an evangelical preacher and served as Chapman’s advance man for several years. When Chapman returned to the pastorate in 1896, Sunday struck out on his own preaching in over seventy communities, mostly in Illinois and Iowa. His reputation as a baseball player enable him to generate publicity by staging local games and playing on both sides.

As crowds increased, Sunday rented canvas tents, pitching them himself and sleeping in them at night for security purposes, but a snowstorm in Salida, Colorado in 1906 destroyed his tent and afterwards Sunday insisted that each town he visit build him a temporary, wooden tabernacle at their own expense. Advance men would visit the upcoming town sites, organize local finances and work crews from churches, and provide advance publicity. Towns would get behind the endeavor as a community effort and these “barn raisings” would unify the congregations in their excitement.

Wheeling’s tabernacle faced 26th street. It was 150,000 feet long and could seat 8,000 people on wooden benches. The lumber was from both Klieves and Scott’s lumber yards and labor was proved by 156 carpenters and an army of volunteers. The work began on January 30th when 225 workers including doctors, lawyers, merchants and laborers turned up for the first day’s work. Workers were transported by the city railway to the First United Presbyterian Church for lunch. The same day 165 homes hosted “cottage prayer meetings” and more than 3,000 people attended.

Four days later the building was finished! It had fourteen entrances, six aisles, a choir loft that could hold 700 and a cinder floor covered with three inches of sawdust. Huge gas stoves heated the tabernacle which was lit by several hundred lights. The interior was decorated with bunting and materials.

Billy Sunday arrived in Wheeling on February 18th with a staff of eleven including pianist, choir leader, soloist, Bible leader, tabernacle custodian, and various others. Three sermons a day would be preached for six weeks and collections would be taken at all services by the 125 ushers.

At a time of no television, this was pure, FREE entertainment which offered young people the opportunity to meet “proper” potential mates. A celebrity of Sunday’s quality, who could speak at over 225 words a minute, dive into “homeplate” on stage, leap to the top of the pulpit, and deliver a hellfire and damnation sermon while strutting the boards was an exciting addition to Wheeling’s pursuit of leisure-time distractions. Having no electronic amplification, Sunday could become quite angry when crying babies competed with him for attention. Nurseries were provided, infants forbidden, and so when a baby slipped past the vigilant ushers, Sunday could become quite rude in his commands that the mothers be escorted from the premises.

The first day’s revival services saw 20,000 in attendance and the Wheeling Register described them as “ a cosmopolitan crowd, rich and poor, humble and great, all mingled together on the crude benches”.

When not preaching, Billy and his wife Nell walked the streets of Wheeling stopping in shops and offices to talk to people and persuade them to come to hear his sermons. Special trains were arranged from Shadyside, Grafton, and Washington, Pennsylvania. A visit to the newspaper office led to front page cartoons touting the popular evangelist and his wife. Each day the Wheeling Register reported a running tally of those who had taken the “sawdust trail to salvation”, the monies collected in the offerings, and sometimes gave a word for word account of each sermon.

During one sermon, Billy Sunday recounted playing baseball twenty years earlier on Wheeling Island and mentioned his friend and fellow baseballer Jack Glasscock, who Sunday described as “one of the greatest shortstops the game ever produced”. Glasscock was West Virginia’s first player to make it to the major leagues.

In describing Billy Sunday’s preaching style, the newspaper reported: “He preaches earnestly, with his whole soul; he drives his sermons home with forcible language, and pertinent gestures. He can be very eloquent or he can preach in street slang. He impresses different people in different ways”.

Crowds could easily become unruly as one newspaper report showed:

“The women at the tabernacle didn’t seem to care for anything and the twenty or thirty policemen there were swept like chaff before the wind when the crowds made a rush for the entrances. Umbrellas, fists, hair-pins, and other implements of uncivilized warfare were used promiscuously, without regard to where the blows or jabs were going to land and the damage to clothes and tempers was an item that may not even be estimated.”

Sunday gave his last sermon on April 1 and then returned to his home in Indiana for a rest. He had suggested that the proceeds from resale of the lumber used for the tabernacle be given to the Playground Association, but it is not known whether this occurred.

In his long career, Sunday preached live to over 100 million people, and it is estimated that close to 1.25 million were converted. Sunday made $870 a day preaching four sermons when the average working man made only $836 a year!! Between 1908 and 1920, Sunday earned over a million dollars while the average worker earned less than $14,000 for the same period.

After World War I, with movies and theaters in abundance as competition, and in waning health, the Sundays saw a decline in attendance at their revivals. Their three sons indulged themselves in the disgraceful behavior that their father preached against and the Sundays were forced to pay blackmail to several women to keep their activities quiet. After the death of their daughter from multiple sclerosis and the suicide of their son after financial ruin, the Sunday’s popularity waned.

Sunday suffered a heart attack in early 1935 and was warned by his doctor to stay out of the pulpit. Ignoring that advice, he died in November of that year.


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