When entering the lobby of the Billy Graham Library, visitors may not expect to be greeted by a cow. Nonetheless, every 12 minutes throughout the day, guests are welcomed by Bessie—an animatronic cow—who shares about Billy Graham’s beginnings on a dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

When Billy Graham was born, the Graham Family dairy farm was in a rural area with rolling fields, pastures, and tin-roofed barns outside of uptown Charlotte. In his autobiography, Just As I Am, a young Billy Graham remembered on rainy days, he liked to “lie on a sweet-smelling and slippery pile of straw, listening to the raindrops hit that tin roof and dreaming.” Those quiet moments in the barn were a “sanctuary that helped shape [his] character.”

Each day Billy Graham awoke at 2:30 a.m. to the sound of his father’s footsteps on the stairs. Knowing he would have to complete his chores before breakfast, he hurried out of bed and began the process of milking the twenty cows he was assigned to tend to each morning. In his autobiography he recalls:

“I repeated the process in twenty stalls each morning; and each afternoon, as soon as I got home from school, I milked the same twenty of our cows again. The job took my flexible fingers about two hours—a very commendable rate of around five minutes per cow… Immediately after school each day, I returned home for the afternoon milking, putting on my old clothes and heading right out to the barn… Then, after chores, there was baseball practice, and homework, and church activities, and get-togethers with my friends.”

The Graham Family dairy farm did not escape the sting of the Great Depression. Following the stock market crash in 1929, milk prices sank to 5-cents a quart and the family’s bank closed, nearly bankrupting Billy Graham’s father. But those hardships taught Billy Graham the value of continuing to seek joy, regardless of circumstances. In his autobiography, he recounts:

“Yet business reverses never stifled my father’s sense of humor. While he had cause to be melancholy or depressed, he was anything but that. There were down moments of course, when the rains did not come and the crops did not grow, or when a prize cow died. But in spite of the hardships, he found much to laugh about. People loved to come to our place from all around the neighborhood just to hear him tell his jokes. His dry sense of humor kept us laughing by the hour.”

Today, guests can discover more about Billy Graham’s start on a dairy farm at the beginning of The Journey of Faith tour. Bessie the Cow laughs about swishing her “wet tail right across his face” during milking time, but fondly recalls God’s call on Billy Graham’s life and his pursuit to share Jesus with millions around the world. Even the silhouette of the Billy Graham Library—shaped like a dairy barn—harkens back to his early life, and the booths in the Graham Brothers Dairy Bar—the on-site café—are reminiscent of the cattle stalls Billy Graham entered each day.

While the Library will be closed for annual maintenance in January 2026, you can still plan your visit and make your reservation to enjoy The Journey of Faith tour when the Library reopens in February.