Christian History Home > Issue 66 > How the West Was Really Won: A Gallery of Local Heroes
How the West Was Really Won: A Gallery of Local Heroes
The wide-open West was served, state by state, by brave and sometimes beleaguered ministers and missionaries like these.
Mark Ammerman | posted 4/01/2000 12:00AM
MONTANA'S EVANGELIST-AT-LARGE
Brother Van (William Wesley Van Orsdel)
1848-1919
After stepping off the steamboat at Fort Benton, Montana, on a June Sunday in 1872, this penniless, sandy-haired, Methodist "evangelist-at-large" was ready to preach. When his impromptu Sabbath service at the Four Deuces saloon came to an end, listeners didn't want to let him go. They asked his name, but since it was a mouthful, they dubbed him "Brother Van." Practically everyone in Montana would know that name before long.
William Wesley Van Orsdel's parents died before he turned 13. An aunt raised "Willie" and his siblings on a small Pennsylvania Dutch farm near Gettysburg. At 15 Van Orsdel was soundly converted at the little Methodist prayer meeting the family attended.
Sometime in the next few years, he was roused by "a mighty vision." He later recalled, "I could see the miners, stage drivers, freighters, cowboys, and here and there among them a copper-colored native, beckoning and calling. To me these were ...
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