Pentecostal Publishing Company
The early presence of the Pentecostal Publishing Company in Louisville complicates William Branham's later Life Story claim that he had no meaningful contact with Pentecostalism until accidentally discovering a Mishawaka meeting, because Roy E. Davis, Branham's first pastor, baptizer, mentor, and Pentecostal Baptist Church of God leader, operated in Louisville and Jeffersonville within reach of established Pentecostal print networks that supplied Sunday school materials, youth papers, lesson cards, and evangelistic literature; this suggests that Branham's early ministry world was already connected to Pentecostal institutions and resources long before the fictionalized fishing-trip narrative, making his later portrayal of Davis as merely Baptist and his own Pentecostal introduction as accidental part of a broader rewriting of his origins.
As early as 1907,[1] a Pentecostal Publishing Company printed Pentecostal materials in Louisville, KY. Roy E. Davis, Pentecostal minister and evangelist, William Branham's first mentor, pastor, and the man who baptized Branham into the Pentecostal Faith,[2] moved his headquarters to Louisville, KY, shortly before fleeing government officials to Jeffersonville, IN. Davis would have likely come in contact with and possibly used materials printed by the Pentecostal Publishing Company. The company published "Pentecostal or (advanced) and Beginners Quarterlies, Sunday-School Illustrator(s), Pentecostal Youth Monthly Paper(s), Picture Lesson Cards, Advanced and Beginners Leaflets", and more. It was a place that created the printed materials that evangelists such as Roy E. Davis and William Branham would have used. When Branham toured the country with Davis, there is a strong possibility that some of their printed materials and/or other supplies came from the Pentecostal Publishing Company
In later versions of William Branham's stage persona, Branham re-wrote his own history to claim that Davis was a Baptist minister instead of Pentecostal, that his "Billie Branham Pentecostal Tabernacle" was instead a "Baptist Church",[3] and that he himself did not receive the "Pentecostal call" until after the 1937 flood. Davis was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan and toured with Branham, and during those times, Branham called him a Baptist minister.
Branham, William. 1952, September. God's Way That's Been Made For Us (52-0900). "Now you good Baptist friends of mine, and know that I belonged…I was a Baptist, and my pastor here is a Baptist."
In those versions of his Life Story created by his stage persona, however, Branham frequently claimed that he had never come in contact with Pentecostal people. Instead, Branham claimed to have been on a "fishing trip" in Mishawaka, IN when he stumbled onto a Pentecostal meeting. According to Branham, this was "the first time to ever come in contact with any Pentecostal people".
Branham, William. 1951, April 15. Life Story (51-0415A). "And I remember one day then I wanted to go on a little fishing trip up at Mishawaka, Indiana. That was my first time to ever come in contact with any Pentecostal people. And I went up to old Brother Ryan’s and went fishing. On my road back, they was having a…It was the—the P. A. of W., I believe it is, or P. A. of J. C. I think the organization’s died out and gone now, but—or reunited with some other organization."
The Pentecostal Publishing company being in Louisville, KY in 1907 gives Branham's new backstory a very unusual problem. When Davis was fleeing government officials for sex with a minor, swindling, and more, he landed in Louisville, KY, just across the river from Branham's hometown of Jeffersonville, IN. As a Pentecostal minister, Davis would have been in contact with other Pentecostals in the area.