$18.00 CAD
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Nice image of preacher who at one time was 'the nation's most famous evangelist'.
This is a full size postcard cut down to keep only the photo image and text
Text on front:
Printed on AZO paper. This would seem to indicate later printing than 1908.
On back, remnant of black paper where card was glued into album
4 ⅝” x 2 ½”
He called himself "an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion," and it's unlikely staid Bloomington had seen anything like him before -- or since.
For five weeks in late 1907 and early 1908, traveling evangelist Billy Sunday attracted more than 400,000 Christians, lapsed Christians and the merely curious to Bloomington with his trademark wild-and-wooly preaching style
During the first two decades of the 20th century, Sunday was the most successful evangelist in the United States. He preached to millions, hobnobbed with U.S. presidents and titans of industry, and waged a tireless campaign against alcohol, playing a significant role in the establishment of Prohibition in 1919.
He railed against not only alcohol, but agnosticism, card playing, college professors, dancing, movies, philosophy and even reading novels.
Seen here is Billy Sunday…sometime during his five-week visit in 1908. Local businessman C.U. Williams printed and sold tens of thousands of postcards of Sunday and his revival work, becoming in the process one of the more successful postcard makers in the U.S.
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/evangelist-billy-sunday-rocked-bloomington-in
