My Famliy Tree

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I have been doing a huge research on the Waltrip Family(Dads side) Grand Paw was a Preacher but his Daddy Was a Well Know Preacher across the south Rev. James "Preacher" Waltrip.... He had a brother Burroughs who was Famous Preacher also who set out across the US...
Found this real good story on Burroughs who to this day no one knows what happened to him....

There is a lot more to this story but this is some interesting stuff: No one in my family has ever dug up as much facts as I have over the last year! Most keep it to them selves and I wanted some answers to our Family History!!!...
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With brimstone, bluff and a devastating smile, Burroughs A. Waltrip blew into Mason City in 1937, a Bible and the promise of a dream church in hand.

Women were drawn to the handsome preacher; men admired him.

Kathryn Kuhlman, who later earned fame as a self-proclaimed faith healer, married him.

Despite the poverty of the Great Depression, many gave him money — lots of money — to build his Radio Chapel, today the home of KIMT-TV studios on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Still, in the space of less than two years, Waltrip was disgraced and spiritually disbarred.

“He took the town by storm — and charmed people out of piles of money,” claims Gerry Schwarz, an English instructor at North Iowa Area Community College, who has written articles about Waltrip. She corresponded with Waltrip’s son, Burroughs A. Waltrip Jr., in 2004

The late Thor Jensen, who covered the events for the Globe Gazette, was quoted in a 1979 article that Waltrip “always claimed he never took a dollar of the chapel’s money and I couldn’t prove he did.”

“But when he drove out of town, he did it in a brand new Buick.”

‘THE LOUISIANA PULPITEER’

Waltrip’s name today is only a footnote to stories springing from the stage of American evangelism, first set by Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson.

The photograph that peers from the old Globe Gazette newspapers of 1937 still turns heads. Waltrip, advertised himself as “The Louisiana Pulpiteer” and “The Fiery Southerner.”

From his first tent revivals for six weeks in the summer of 1937 to the chapel’s grand opening in 1938, Waltrip was able to raise pledges of $70,000 — almost a $1 million in today’s buying power — to build the modernistic, Art Deco-inspired chapel.

Its “sole purpose,” according to an advertisement in November 1937 was “soul winning and the establishment of Christians in fundamental Gospel truths.”

A PREACHER’S SON

Waltrip was no stranger to the business of saving souls.

He was the oldest of three children born to Reuben Waltrip, a preacher, and his wife, Lila, in Freestone County, in east Texas, according to 1910 Federal Census records.

At 15, he lost both his father and younger sister in the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to Texas death records.

After graduating from high school, he launched into a series of small jobs — gas station attendant, department store manager among them — and at 19 began preaching.

TRAVELING MAN

Waltrip’s son wrote in his recollections, housed at the Mason City Public Library, that his father was the Baptist pastor of two churches before he later discarded his Baptist credentials to become a Pentecostal evangelist. Waltrip Jr. visited Mason City in 1994, the only time he had ever seen the city.

In his recounting of his father’s early life, he wrote that Waltrip Sr. established his first chapel in Lake Charles, La., in 1934, at the Calcasieu Tabernacle, using the same method he would use later in Mason City: He held several tent revivals before soliciting money to build the chapel. He left there one year later.

Waltrip recalled that his father was “a dreamer of grandiose dreams, always looking for an opportunity to make a grand name for himself.”

“He was ever the publicity seeker ... I have photographs of several large oilcloth signs he displayed at tent revivals. ‘Burroughs A. Waltrip Evangelistic Party’ they proclaim. Always his name in every piece of publicity.”

Waltrip’s wife, Jessie, who he married in 1926, traveled with her husband to several states during revivals. She bore the challenges — many of them financial — of being married to the evangelist.

Waltrip Jr. tells of his father without his mother’s knowledge, selling “every book in her personal library” to raise money and spoke of how his mother had to pay off his large debt at her own father’s grocery story.

Jessie wearied of the travel and wanted to keep the children near Austin, Texas. Waltrip continued his journeys.

“On Feb. 14, 1937, instead of a Valentine’s card she expected, my mother received a letter from my father telling her he was filing for divorce,” he said.

Waltrip Sr. claimed in his divorce petition that Jessie “threatened the plaintiff’s life and had been guilty of other acts of cruelty,” according to Marion County (Iowa) court records, where the eventual decree was made. In the decree, Waltrip was supposed to pay off the family’s DeSoto and pay child support.

“He never paid a penny,” said his son.

Jessie Waltrip, who died in 1945, never remarried.

MISSING MAN

What happened to Waltrip in later years is obscure.

Waltrip’s son said his father wrote him a letter that said he was “in the publishing business” in Kansas City in the early 1940s, but found out later Waltrip was selling burial vaults. It is known Waltrip wrote a book, “Christ Reveals the Future,” published by “The Fundamental Prophetic Association” in Des Moines in 1943. It may have been self-published.

Waltrip Jr. recalled that his uncle, James, reported within family circles that Burroughs Waltrip Sr. died in a California prison in the 1970s, incarcerated for bilking money from a woman. Waltrip Jr. dismisses the account as “hokum.” His search to verify his father’s conviction — he even enlisted the help of prison officials — yielded no clues.

He said he still has no idea where “the Fiery Southerner” ended a colorful, if checkered, life. No death record is known to exist for him. If still living, he would be 103.

WALTRIP’S LEGACY

The chapel, operated by Sentman’s church for several years, became the home of KGLO Radio studios in 1953. Later, KIMT-TV was established there and was remodeled to house the studios. The look of the original chapel has been altered to accommodate the modern age.

The ceiling’s large buttresses can still be seen, but the auditorium has since been divided into work areas.

“I get a a lot of questions about the Radio Chapel, even now,” said KIMT meteorologist, Adam Frederick.

Lee Meleney, who is KIMT’s handyman and custodian of history, said “even groups from New York and Los Angeles have asked to come here,” he said.

“Those who hear the story call it intriguing, humorous — one of the more interesting stories to come from that era,” said Harrison.

“And, he left a legacy,” said Schwarz.