100.543.1-2

100.543.1-2
This log home that stood on the Simmons farm near Ames is the one in which evangelist Billy Sunday; his two older brothers; and his mother, Mary Jane "Jennie" Cory Sunday Heizer Stowall, lived for a short time when Billy Sunday was a child. The woman in the picture may be Jennie Stowall a few years before she died at the age of 75 years, 11 months. The cabin by the time of this photograph had deteriorated and was being used as a chicken coop. Billy Sunday visited Ames on several occasions; and Harry F. Brown, Farwell Brown's father, would drive him around in his Model-T Ford. On one occasion, they went to the Simmons farm so that Sunday could see the cabin in which he had lived. Inside the cabin was a walnut bed that was being used as a chicken roost. It was a bed in which Sunday had slept as a boy. The farmer gave the bed to Sunday who in turn gave it to Harry Brown who had it restored by an Ames cabinetmaker named Wagner who lived on the corner of Twelfth Street and Grand Avenue. The Browns used it as a day bed on their porch for many years. During Ames's 75th anniversary in 1939 the bed was displayed in the window of the newspaper office. The farmer who had given the bed to Billy Sunday saw it and decided that he was the real owner and demanded that Harry Brown return it to him. Brown told him he could have it if he would pay him what he had spent to restore it--around $78. The farmer quickly changed his mind. Today [2006] the bed is in the home of Farwell Brown's niece in Des Moines.
Citation: 100.543.1-2
Year: 1913 (approx.)
Categories: People, Houses