Church History Trip - Day 4

Saturday, August 30, 2008 - Gretchen and I started our day with an amazing breakfast at the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites. We were on the bus by 7:30am, heading for the Nauvoo Temple. I'll include a little more about the Nauvoo Temple, but can I just say... that was seriously the best place to start this day! It was amazing.

After we were done at the temple, we were taken back to the inn to change, and then turned loose on "downtown" Nauvoo for some shopping and lunch time. "Downtown" Nauvoo consists of one street: Mulholland. So we wandered down Mulholland, in the general westerly direction of the temple and historic Nauvoo. We stopped by several shops, including none other than the famed Nauvoo Fudge Factory. Everything good you've ever heard about their fudge is true! We got lunch at the Zion's Mercantile and raced to catch the bus.

We met up with Mindy near the Historic Nauvoo's Lyon's Apothecary and Variety Store.

Dictionary.com defines "apothecary" basically as a pharmacy or druggist. Above is a picture of our pal Ferdy in Lyon's Apothecary and Variety Store - which was basically a "general store" at the time of the Saints. Along with different tonics and elixirs, Lyon's originally sold fabrics, regular imports, and tons of dried herbs and spices!

These two pictures are of the most amazing herb garden I have ever walked through. It was the garden that Brother Lyon used in his apothecary. There was a little garden stone at the north end of the garden that said, "One is nearer God's Heart in a Garden than Anywhere Else on Earth." I'm a sucker for plants and basically all things living, so I just fell in love with that thought! I promised myself that someday I would have such a cool garden!

So, although this picture is Ferdner, there is an actual point as well. The glass in this window is the same glass that is found everywhere throughout historic Nauvoo. Apparently there was a man that learned the art of making old glass and relocated to Nauvoo. He's not a member of the Church, but had this skill and thought that he could utilize it in the rebuilding of historic Nauvoo. Making vintage glass is a unique process, something that in many ways is a lost art - but this guys shows up and knows how to make it! All of the glass in the temple and in most of the restored buildings was made by this guy. I just thought it was cool - one of life's little miracles!

This is random, but after we left Lyon's, we headed down to take a tour through all of the sites now owned by the Community of Christ in Historic Nauvoo. We passed this pine tree where the pine cones actually grow up, toward the sky, instead of toward the ground.

There are two main parts of Historic Nauvoo - those owned by the Church, where the "docents" are senior missionary couples; and those owned and run by members of the Community of Christ. We paid a $2.00 donation to tour the Community of Christ sites in Nauvoo. This is the Nauvoo House; this building was originally constructed as a "bed and breakfast" type hotel/inn. I was never actually completed during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, Jr. Emma Smith did live here with her 2nd husband, Lewis Bidamon. The stone in the bottom right-hand corner was a corner stone of the Nauvoo House... that's how big the hotel wing was designed to be.

This is the Homestead. The right portion was a log-type cabin that Joseph and Emma first moved to when the Saints arrived in Nauvoo. Not long after they arrived in Nauvoo, however, Joseph realized that they would need a larger keeping room for meals and meetings; the white portion of the house was constructed for that purpose.

Both the Nauvoo House and the Homestead were located really close in proximity to the Mississippi River. This is a marshy area between the houses and the main part of the river. It was beautiful!

Outside of the Homestead, to the northwest, is a bee house. After the martyrdom, Emma had the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum buried in the cellar of the Homestead. Fearing that the location would be too easy to discover, Emma had the bodies moved to under the bee house a few years later. Emma herself was buried under the lilac bushes just outside the bee house. For years, no one knew where the bodies of the Prophet and his brother were buried. The Church actually spent a lot of time excavating different parts of Nauvoo looking for the Prophet's final resting place. Only a few decades ago, the great-great grandchildren of Joseph and Emma revealed to the Community of Christ church where the bodies were buried. At that time, the bodies were moved to a location about 20-30 feet away. The second picture is of the monument that now sits over the three bodies.

This is the Mansion House, built in 1842. Joseph wanted to have a house that was big enough to accommodate his many varied guests, so in addition to this house there was a hotel wing. It had a huge amount of rooms, especially for the time.

Our last stop on the Community of Christ site tour was the Red Brick Store. While the main floor was a general mercantile, the back held the bishop's office and the upstairs was a large meeting room. It was in the upper room that the first endowment ordinances were performed, preceding those that took place in the Nauvoo Temple upon its completion. The upper room was also where the Relief Society was organized and held its meetings while the Church was headquartered in Nauvoo. The Community of Christ still has a little store on the main level where they sell things similar to what would have been available when the Saints were there.

We did our regular shopping as well, but you can't pass up a good game of checkers.

After the Community of Christ sites, we were turned loose on Historic Nauvoo to finish up our own site seeing. Gretchen, Mindy, and I walked north to the Nauvoo Wainwright and Blacksmith. Our "docent" was the Elder that played George in Rendezvous the night before. A wainwright is a wagon maker (not to be confused with a wheelwright, who just made the wheels). I think there were 3 or 4 wainwrights in Nauvoo, who together with the blacksmith and wheelwright were very busy for the year prior to the Nauvoo Exodus. George also made us prairie diamond rings out of diamond-head horseshoe nails.

Always a fan of horses, I stopped outside to see them outside the blacksmith shop. While we were petting them, I got bit by a horsefly (pain!) and Mindy got urped on by one of the horses. We decided not to visit them anymore.

The Seventies Hall is right down Parley Street from the smith and wainwright shop. When the Saints were in Nauvoo, the Seventies Hall was basically the MTC. Brethren would meet here to learn as much as they could to prepare for their missions. Joseph Smith also had the top floor of the Hall converted into a type of museum. Missionaries were sent to many different places and far away lands, and Joseph encouraged them to return with mementos from the place they served their mission so that the Saints in Nauvoo could learn a little about other peoples and cultures. These two pictures are Mindy, Gretchen, and me standing (with Ferdner) at the podium in the Seventies Hall.

We headed north back toward Main Street, passing Brigham Young's home on our way. (I don't think he really had benches on the sidewalk when he lived there... but you never know...)

We headed west next to the brickyard. Here they gave each of us a keepsake Nauvoo Brick. Most of the homes in the area were constructed out of brick, with a few exceptions like the Mansion House. Nauvoo brick was considered special because of the color of the brick. It was made from clay from the Mississippi River, and dried into a beautiful rust-colored brick. After the martyrdom, and the decision to move westward was made, the brickyard stopped kilning bricks and started kilning logs. The wainwrights had to have completely dried wood to use for the wagon axels, and they only way the could dry the wood quickly was in the brick kiln.

Keepsake "Old Nauvoo" Brick

After we visited the Brickyard, we walked past the Lucy Mack Smith home. We also toured the Pendleton Log Home and School, where we took a flash-card word quiz that felt a lot like playing Madd Gabb. There was no standardized spelling at that time, and so a lot of words were spelled the way they sounded... which is NOTHING like how we spell them now!

We were nearing the end of the day, and we had time for one more stop before we boarded the bus. We decided on the Jonathan Browning Home & Gun Shop.

Jonathan Browning should probably be listed as one of the most famous Mormons, especially during his lifetime. Prior to his conversion, he was a judge in Quincy, Illinois where he was acquainted with people like Abraham Lincoln. Browning became curious of the Mormon settlement in Nauvoo, and after his first visit with Joseph Smith became converted to the gospel. The impact he had on the citizens of Nauvoo, and on Church History, was profound. He was ridiculously rich and a very talented gunsmith. He stayed in Kanesville throughout much of the Mormon Migration in order to build guns for the pioneers moving westward. He relocated to Utah in 1852. Aside from his prominence in the Church, however, Browning as a gunsmith is basically a household name - for any household that has guns, anyway. His son, John Moses Browning, is the most important figure in the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms. The Browning gun line includes many patented models, including several Colts, Winchesters, Remingtons, and (of course) Brownings.

This was my favorite gun that they had at the Browning home in Nauvoo: the 30 caliber air cooled machine gun. It was used in both World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, and all over presently by U.S. armed forces. It was invented by John Moses Browning, who "is recognized as the world's greatest gun inventor and contributed more to the national security of the United States of America than any American inventor who ever lived." Pretty cool...

I still have NO idea how Mindy got this picture in the gun shop, but unfortunately I kinda like it...

We boarded the bus and headed out to our last stop for the day: Carthage Jail. Aside from Liberty Jail, this was - for me - the most powerful place we visited. This is the monument of Joseph and Hyrum placed outside the Jail and Visitors' Center in Carthage. Over Joseph's right shoulder is the upper window that he fell through after he was shot.

When the prisoners were initially brought to Carthage, they were placed in the actual jail cell. The jailer, after speaking with the prophet and other prisoners, realized that they were innocent men. His feelings led to compassion, and the jailer had the prisoners removed from the stifling jail cell to the bedroom downstairs. The downstairs bedroom, however, was so easily accessible from outside that, for the safety of the incarcerated men, the jailer had them moved up into his own bedroom on the second floor. It was there that the martyrdom took place. It is believed that the jailer was not aware of the evil intentions of the mob, because his wife and children were downstairs when the mobbers stormed the jailhouse.

This is the door to the upper bedroom, the same door that was present at the time of the martyrdom. A family bought the jailhouse a few years later and converted it to a home, preserving the original building. When the mobbers came up the stairs, the Brethren pushed against the door to keep it closed. At one point the mob was able to wedge the door open, and Willard Richards used his walking stick to deflect the guns that were shoved through the opening. Not long after the mob arrived, a gun on the other side of the door was discharged (accidentally, some believe). The ball came through the door (creating the hole that is still visible in this picture) and killed Hyrum.

John Taylor was shot 5 times, the last being a ball that would have struck his heart if his pocket watch had not caught it instead. Once wounded, John Taylor fell to the floor and rolled under the jailer's bed. Joseph, hoping that he could save the other men imprisoned, moved toward the window. At the same moment, the mob pushed through the door and Willard Richards was pinned behind the door. Joseph was shot through both the window and the door and fell out the window. The impact of the fall compounded his vertebrate and would have killed him on impact, but it is believed that he was already dead before he hit the ground.

The mob, realizing that they had shot their quarry, rushed out of the room to make sure that Joseph was dead.

Fearing that them mob would return, Willard Richards moved the injured John Taylor into the prison cell and hid him underneath the mattress. The weight of the mattress pushed John Taylor into the straw underneath, forcing straw into his open wounds. The straw helped to stop the bleeding, saving John Taylor's life. Outside someone shouted "The Mormon's are coming! The Mormon's are coming!" The mob fled, followed soon by the citizens of Carthage who feared retaliation by the Mormons in Nauvoo... a retaliation that never came.

The Brother that took my group on our tour bore his testimony of the events that took place at Carthage. The spirit was very strong, and I was touched at the sacrifice of these great men.

Outside, next to the monument, are plaques that contain quotes by the Prophet Joseph Smith. One included the testimony recorded in D&C 76:22-24. Another said, "When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth's sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do His will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, nor will not, seek his face in vain" (1835).

In a priesthood blessing given to Hyrum Smith, also in 1835, he was told, "Thou shalt have power to escape the hand of thine enemies. Thy life shall be sought with untiring zeal, but thou shalt escape. If it please thee, and thou desirest, thou shalt have the power voluntarily to lay down they life to glorify God" (Kirtland High Council Minutes). Hyrum was promised that he would survive, unless he chose to lay down his life in order to glorify God. In 1839, Hyrum bore the following testimony as regards his imprisonment in Liberty Jail: "I thank God that I felt a determination to die, rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled, and which I had bore testimony to" (Times & Seasons, Dec. 1839).

I am truly humbled at the great sacrifices these men made, willingly, rather than deny their testimonies of the restored gospel. It was an incredible moment in time.

Our somber group proceeded to a restaurant in Carthage. We were, frankly, dreading dinner because we had been warned by the other bus about the food... I ate mostly salad, because they were right - it was horrid! If you ever go there, I highly recommend driving back to Nauvoo for dinner.

We returned to our hotel, and Gretchen and I took a walk back down to the Nauvoo Temple for some night shots. Best way to begin and end a day - at the temple!!