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anticipated marriage. Asher organized local churchwomen to serve as hostesses at luncheons for these young women. They would be served a simple five- to ten-cent lunch—perhaps a sandwich, a pickle, and coffee—before Asher spoke to them about such sins as promiscuity and drinking. They were also strongly encouraged to attend the Billy Sunday services in the evenings.
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Virginia Asher took charge of the ministry to “businesswomen,” mostly shop girls, hospital employees, and factory operatives—any women who worked outside their homes. Often they had been recently deracinated from rural families and viewed their employment as only a temporary expedient before an
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At the end of a series of Sunday meetings in a city, Virginia Asher organized “businesswomen’s councils” to continue Bible studies and evangelistic work after the Sunday organization had left for another campaign. In 1922, the councils organized a national organization, the
Virginia Asher
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in
Chicago (1893). Their success there led to William Asher being called as assistant pastor of Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church, where both Ashers worked for five years during the pastorate of J. Frank Talmadge. During this period, professional baseball player and future evangelist
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In the service of Moody Church she met her future husband, William Asher, who had been converted at the same evangelistic meeting as Healey, and they were married on
December 14, 1887. Their only child died at birth. Virginia Asher attended classes at the precursor of
98:. Healey was converted to evangelical Christianity at the age of eleven and shortly thereafter became involved in the church’s Sunday School ministry. Healey had a fine contralto voice and apparently received some professional training from
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began to travel with her husband and manage the campaign staff. Nell Sunday first hired two female Bible teachers, Grace Sax and
Francis Miller, and then in 1911 invited the Ashers to become part of the organization.
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where they evangelized in the slums and at Duluth Bethel, a ministry to seamen, miners, and lumberjacks in the frontier port city. The Ashers then became assistants in the evangelistic campaigns of
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As Billy Sunday campaigns declined in popularity, ill health forced Asher to retire from Sunday’s staff after seventeen years of service. She died at her home in
Florida in February 1937.
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By the first decade of the twentieth century, the evangelistic ministry of Billy Sunday had grown dramatically in both size and income, and Sunday’s wife,
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Businesswomen’s
Councils, that held annual meetings at Winona Lake Bible Conference. Local associations continued to exist well into the 1950s.
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Virginia Healey was born in
Chicago to Irish Catholic parents, who however, did not seem to mind their daughter attending services at
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Brief biography at Billy Graham Center
Archives, Papers of Virginia Healey Asher - Collection 197
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78:(December 18, 1869 – February 2, 1937) was a gospel singer and evangelist to women.
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At the evangelistic services, Virginia Asher often sang duets with music director
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In the 1890s, the couple held open-air evangelistic meetings near the original
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William C. McLoughlin, "Billy Sunday and the
Working Girl of 1915,"
216:(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 30–31, 80, 203–04.
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Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry
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223:(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 80, 103-06.
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228:Journal of Presbyterian History
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129:The Ashers moved on to
108:Moody Bible Institute
76:Virginia Healey Asher
20:Virginia Healey Asher
266:Singers from Chicago
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162:The Old Rugged Cross
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135:J. Wilbur Chapman
131:Duluth, Minnesota
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61:(1937-02-02)
261:Evangelists
256:1937 deaths
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233:Obituary,
179:References
41:1869-12-18
82:Biography
164:” and “
67:Florida
146:Nell
56:Died
35:Born
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