100.546.1-3

100.546.1-3
Whenever the world-famous evangelist Billy Sunday visited Ames (where he had been born on November 19, 1862), Harry F. Brown (the father of Farwell T. Brown and Josephine Brown Leffler) would drive him around town 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 once lived. The cabin at that time was being used as a chicken coop. Inside the cabin was a walnut bed that was being used as a roost. The bed turned out to be the one in which Sunday had slept when a boy. The farmer gave the bed to Sunday who in turn gave it to Harry Brown. Brown had it restored by an Ames cabinetmaker named Wagner who lived at 12th Street and Grand Avenue. The Harry 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. He 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 Mary Ellen Leffler (Josephine Brown Leffler's daughter) in Des Moines, Iowa.
Citation: 100.546.1-3
Year: 1983 (approx.)
Categories: People, Misc.