The American evangelists J Wilbur Chapman and Charles M Alexander attracted a crowd of 8,000 to their first revival meeting in Adelaide at the Exhibition Building in July 1909. Revival was a familiar concept among the Methodists, who made up a quarter of the South Australian population in the 19th century, and many overseas revivalists visited the state. Special trains were run to bring hundreds of people from the country districts to the Chapman-Alexander mission meetings, many of them singing the hymns popularised by the two men as they travelled. The team paid a return visit in 1912.