Iowa TV Schooltime: Landmarks in Iowa History - Nevada

it's TV school time Wi-Fi TV in association with Iowa State Teachers College presents another program in the Iowa TV school time series landmarks in Iowa history today's topic is Nevada your teacher is her peak of Iowa State Teachers College hello boys and girls this is a cold day so I'm drinking a little coffee now the man who grew up in this house back here was very much opposed to drinking but he was opposed to whiskey Jim and rum and things like that he didn't oppose drinking coffee well I think this will be alright if I drink some coffee out here in the front yard pardon me just a moment that warms ya we're in Nevada did you hear the announcer say we're in Nevada today and this house is at 7-eleven 10th Street in Nevada and here in this very same house one of the world's greatest evangelists spent his boyhood this is the hole now of an attorney in Nevada named Jesse W Johnson but way back around 1872 Billy Sunday lived here he was a boy who helped with the chores and this home at that time was owned by Colonel John Scott who was once the lieutenant governor of Iowa and this is where Billy Sunday lived while he was going to school he went to school in a building in Nevada which is still standing one of the old school buildings there and there are some older people in Nevada who can still remember when Billy Sunday live where these people are over 90 now but they remember that Billy Sunday lived in this house and he was very fond of horses and that was one of his jobs to take care of the saddle horses owned by Colonel John Scott but there aren't very many houses still standing in Iowa which were actually occupied by a famous man usually an aisle or these houses are torn down to make room for bigger and better houses so I'm delighted that here in Nevada the very same house in which Billy Sunday lives is still standing now I imagine most of you boys and girls know where Nevada is you notice we call at Nevada here in Iowa the name of the state out west is called Nevada at the Spanish name here in Iowa we say Nevada Nevada spelled the same way well here on the map this little white dot shows the location of Nevada Billy Sunday was born in Ames on a farm near Ames in 1862 his father was a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War and he died of pneumonia never did see his son William and as the boy was born during the summer and the father died in camp in the following winter well mrs. Sunday had several children and she was very poor and so some of the children including Billy had to go and live with their grandfather we're also live near Ames but these were hard times and so Billy and his brother were sent to an orphanage way over here in Davenport and when his brother got to be 16 years old which is the age when boys are expected to leave the orphanage and get job Billy persuaded the people at the orphanage to let him go back home with his brother even though he was only 10 years old at the time so they went back to Ames back to grandfather Cory's farm but things were still very rough their grandfather didn't have very much money and he was just barely able to support himself and so one day when he was 10 years old Billy Sunday borrowed a horse from his grandfather and rode over here to the county seat of Story County the town of Nevada and there he first got a job working in the hotel in Nevada and then he got a job with Colonel John Scott because Colonel Scott had some horses he needed someone to do the feeding and to curry them take care of them in general and so he offered to provide a home for Billy Sunday in his own house and that's where Billy Sunday lived while he worked for Colonel Scott and also while he went to school Billy Sunday also served as a janitor in the schoolhouse there at Nevada the same building that you will see in a few minutes on a film well as he grew up he got interested in baseball and he became a member of a baseball team over here in Marshalltown and one day when the boys were playing baseball a scout from the Chicago white stockings came to see the game a man with the name of pop Anson and pop Anson was so impressed by Billy Sunday and his speed in running the bases and in playing as a fielder that he offered him a job with the Chicago white stockings which is now the team called the Chicago White Sox and so Billy Sunday went to Chicago and became a baseball player and was one of the fastest baserunners in the big leagues for eight years and then one night while he was in Chicago he saw a Salvation Army Band and he followed this band to the mission and he was converted he decided that the Lord had called him to do his work and so he gave up his baseball job which paid him five hundred dollars a month and took a job with his Chicago YMCA and this paid him eighty three dollars a month well you can see he didn't go into Church work because of the money and he had a very tough time making ends meet he had married in the meantime and then he got a break a man by the name of JW Chapman who was a famous evangelist at that time evangelists were traveling preachers heard about Billy Sunday and how active he was in the YMCA and he offered him a job as an advance man a man who would go ahead of the evangelists and make arrangements in the towns where the meetings were to be held and Billy Sunday worked with JW Chapman for about two years until Chapman decided to quit this life of the road then take a church in Philadelphia and then Billy Sunday wondered how in the world he was going to make a living and just as he was about to decide to go back into baseball he got an invitation from the ministers in Garner Iowa here is garnet right up here up here on highway 69 this is highway 69 going north and south here is highway 30 we east west well he got an invitation to conduct revival meetings in the town of garnet and before he had finished that he got an invitation to go down to sigourney and conduct another series of meetings and from there he went to other places in Iowa and he was never out of work after that but as he was such a sincere preacher and he was able to present religion in such a way that people came to listen that from that time on until his death in 1935 he was a very very busy evangelist here is a picture of Billy Sunday as he looked during the peak of his career from nineteen eight until 1918 Billy Sunday was one of the most famous of all evangelist and he was so famous and so many people came to hear him that there were no churches large enough for the crowds and so he built what were called Tabernacles big barn like structures that were built especially for him the first one of these was built in Perry Iowa back in nineteen one and the advance people said there's no church big enough for these meetings and so they said to the ministers in Perry we will have to build a large structure that will be large enough for the thousands of people who will come to hear Billy Sunday so they went to the lumber yard and got this lumber and said now we're not going to paint this and we will just put two nails in each board throw it in case of a fire or something people who are on the inside can just push against the board and they'll come off so there were only two nail holes in each board and after the meetings were over they would sell this lumber back to the lumber yard so of course it didn't cost very much that way but these big Tabernacles were used instead of tents because tents could blow down very easily and whenever it rained the canvas would stretch real tight and it would sometimes split so Billy Sunday was the first person to use these big Tabernacles big wooden Tabernacles and in order to keep things quiet inside the ground was covered with sawdust so at the end of the services when Billy son Dave said now how many of you men and women are coming forward to shake my hand and give your lives to Christ they would come down the aisles and this was called hitting the sawdust trail that was an expression that comes that goes all the way back to Billy Sunday's evangelistic meetings well this is a very interesting story the story of Billy Sunday and I suggest that if you would like to read more about it that you refer to this book which is called Billy Sunday was his real name now that sounds almost like a name that was made up because Billy Sunday was a preacher and we usually think of preaching on Sunday but this was his real name William Ashley Sunday Billy Sunday so this is one book that tells the story of Billy Sunday better than I can tell it and here is another one called they gathered at the river they gathered at the river this refers to an old-time hymn called shall we gather at the river and I'm sure your mothers and fathers have heard this hymn if you haven't heard it the the refrain at the end of the chorus goes gather with the Saints that's the river that flows by the throne of God so that's the reference in this title they gathered at the river this is the story of many famous American evangelists well I told you at the beginning that Billy Sunday although he was born in Ames spent his boyhood in Nevada so I have a film now that shows some of the scenes in Nevada connected with the boyhood of Billy Sunday and mr. Weiss has that film in Ames I'm sure so let's see if mr. Weiss here we go here is the school in Nevada this is one of the later buildings that you see right here and coming into the picture at the left is the building you know that's that isn't it either I forgot just the order in which I took these pictures I'll show you in a minute this is what this is the latest addition to the school than in Nevada there are several buildings here in this same block and they all represent different periods of architecture they go from the oldest to the newest no building has been torn down as yet this is the newest right here and in a minute I'll show you the building where Billy Sunday was the janitor there it is at last one and here is the house where a Billy Sunday lived this is the Colonel John Scott house 7-eleven tenth Street now occupied by attorney Johnson and Billy Sunday slept in this back part here that has the chimney on it had a little room back there this is the Dutton place a very old building owned by the banker in Nevada and Billy Sunday as a boy used to visit the boys who lived here and they played in the barn they were all very fond of horses and this of course was a farming community and here is the barn I'll show you some interior pictures of that in a minute here is the story County Courthouse in Nevada Story County has its county seat in story city not even story city in Nevada funny story city is also in Story County we were there two weeks ago there's the Main Street Main Street of Nevada of course Nevada didn't look like that one Billy Sunday lived there some of those buildings are probably old buildings but they've had their faces lifted now let me show you some pictures here is the the John Scott house as it looked at the time Billy Sunday lived in it this is an old old newspaper picture and that is the houses it looked in the old days and here is how it looks today this looks very much like the pictures you see in the background same view here's another angle of the house this was mr. Johnson's car car of the present owner here's the house back here is where Billy Sunday had his room and here is the interior of the Duffing barn where Billy Sunday played I said the mrs. Dolby Dutton who was very kind and showing me around the place is this a carving that Billy Sunday made and mrs. Dutton said no that's the name of a horse we had here at one time this happened that they had a horse named Bill and so he's the name of the horse was carved above the stall but there is a place where Billy Sunday carved his initials and in order to find it you have to climb up this letter inside the barn up to the cupola a little penthouse up on top and when you get into the Tupelo you'll find a beam up here it has a number of initials carved on it and here is WS Billy Sunday carved his initials there when he was a boy well you have to climb all the way up into the top of this barn to find the signature Billy Sunday Billy Sunday was just one of many evangelists of course he was the one who really made a large-scale operation out of it in this book called Billy Sunday was his real name you see some drawings made on the spot of Billy Sunday in action now this is one of these Tabernacles you see it's just it just made out of unpainted wood but it would hold thousands of people and there would be a high platform at one end so that everybody could see Billy Sunday and he preached now he didn't have any microphones this was before the days of microphones before the days of loudspeakers and radios and he had to have a tremendous voice to be heard there would be a sort of a sound board up over his head here so that his voice wouldn't be lost up there in the rafters but he had to be able to speak loudly enough so he could be heard by all these thousands of people who gathered here there were reporters who were taking down what he was saying because Billy Sunday made news wherever he went but you notice his violent action here he was an athlete remember he had been a member of the Chicago white stockings baseball team he was famous all over the country because of his speed and base running he could get around the bases in 14 seconds as if he hit a home run he could get around and sometimes even a hit which wouldn't be a home run for other baseball players became a home run for Billy Sunday because he was able to go around the basement so fast so as a preacher as an evangelist he used this athletic ability to act out his fights with the devil now you don't see very many preachers who get into that kind of a position when they're preaching he was he was active and alive and it was quite a show just to watch it at the end of his services he would always issue a call for people to come and shake his hand and show that they meant to live better lives and here is a drawing showing him leaning down from this high platform shaking hand to the people coming up to give their souls to Christ here is mr. Sunday up here she was the business manager of these campaigns and here was the song leader also a famous man Homer rodeheaver who went along with Billy Sunday and led the choir there would sometimes be as many as a thousand people up here on the stage singing in the choir accompanied by two pianos and Homer rodeheaver led the singing here's another drawing which shows rodeheaver playing his trombone and here's Billy Sunday standing behind the pulpit here his head bowed well the old Hebrew is playing at him well that gives you some idea of the way in which Billy Sunday would I said a moment ago that Billy Sunday was not the first of the great American revivalists this was probably the first successful revivalist in the United States Charles Grandison Finnick he was a popular preacher in the east in the 1830s he began his revival campaigns in 1825 and he worked in a large temp and later became one of the first presidents of Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio and the the first commencement exercises and at Oberlin College were held in one of Charles Penny's revival tents there's a big tent was put up on the campus they didn't have a big enough building to take care of all the relatives we came to see the graduate and so they had one of the big revival tent stood up on the campus and that's where the first women who ever graduated from a college anywhere in the United States received their diploma Oberlin College - the first college to give women a chance to get a college education but Charles Grandison Finney who was the president of Oberlin College was first of all a great revival preacher now both Finney both Finney and Williams Sunday Billy Sunday were bitterly opposed to liquor violently opposed to the liquor traffic and wherever they could they would preach against the sins of liquor whiskey and beer and gin and rum brandy all these things billy someday like to point out that if it hadn't been for hard liquor Abraham Lincoln President Garfield and President McKinley would never have been assassinated because all three of these assassins got themselves liquored up first to work themselves into some kind of a frenzy and when they were good and drunk they killed these three presidents in our nation's history and all the way through his long campaign Billy Sunday was opposed to the liquor traffic it is said that the campaigns which Billy Sunday launched here in Iowa closed the saloons in such places as Oskaloosa and Ottumwa and many other places in Iowa this was long before prohibition and during his long career he fought the liquor traffic so bitterly that many people said that the 18th amendment was probably passed because of the campaign's of Billy Sunday the 18th amendment was the prohibition amendment which made it against the law sell liquor anywhere at anytime or to drink it now of course there were so many bootleggers and so many criminals who brought in liquor from Canada and some boat that came across the ocean that they finally repealed the 18th amendment but Billy Sunday was one of the great forces that brought this about brought about the amendment in the first place the prohibition amendment well let's review a little bit early Sunday as I told you became famous first of all as a baseball player there is the baseball no let's get a picture of Billy Sunday out of this weekend this won't be a very flattering likeness but Billy Sunday was not happy as a baseball player he felt that he had been called to do a more important work and after his conversion in Chicago and he took a job which paid him only about a sixth as much as he was making as a ballplayer but it made him happy felt that he was made him feel that he was doing the Lord's work even though he was not being paid as much the other thing that I'd like to have you remember about Billy Sunday is the great horse which he exerted against liquor his fight against whiskey Ares a whiskey bottle well Billy Sunday felt that this was one of the great evils of his time and wherever he went he fought against liquor and he pictured the people who drank as man who looked like this noses that were red and bloodshot eyes that were drooping and as I told you a moment ago though a sundae is credited as having been the person who did more than anyone else to bring about the closing of the saloons during the time that he was in the evangelist Billy Sunday conducted over 300 revival meetings all over the United States he preached to over 100 million people before the days of radios and loudspeakers over 1 million people were converted and this was done by this one man and his team now after the 18th amendment had been passed the crusade to which Billy Sunday had given most of his time was over and so after a 1918 you don't hear very much about Billy Sunday but this is the sample of the type of preaching that he did here is a quotation from one of his sermons against liquor the saloon is a coward a robber and a thief it robs you of manhood and leaves you in rags it sends you home bleary-eyed and staggering to your wife and children it is the dirtiest most lowdown damnable business that ever crawled out of the pit of hell well if millions of people heard this kind of preaching it's no wonder that the 18th amendment was passed next week we are going to add air to the scene of the first train robbery in Iowa a train robbery by Jesse James until next week goodbye today your teacher and then her shake of Iowa State Teachers College landmarks in Iowa history is produced for Iowa TV school time by woi TV in association with Iowa State Teachers College TV school time is presented daily Monday through Friday at 10:30 a.m. by the Iowa joint committee for Educational Television