We got out of St. Louis early and were making good time to Keokuk. When we got to the westerly edge of Keokuk there were signs for a detour on Hwy 61 and also the highway we were going to take through Keokuk. They indicated only local traffic was allowed to enter Keokuk. Oh my...what to do.
Claude doubled back to read the signs again. I quickly pulled out the Blackberry and checked Iowa highway traffic issues on the Internet. My Internet search confirmed there were some flooding issues on Hwy. 61, hence the detour. Next I called our hotel. We were to leave Nauvoo that evening and come back to Keokuk where our hotel reservation was for Sunday evening. My concern was we would not be able to cross the Mississippi going west to get into Keokuk in the evening and to our hotel. The nice lady at the hotel's front desk assured me the bridge over the Mississippi and into Keokuk was open and we could get in that way but we needed to take the detour around Keokuk from where we were.
Claude headed northwest on our detour road. We only had the one day in Nauvoo and were now seeing lost time and we had to go out of our way to come back at the next crossing of the Mississippi north of Keokuk.
Ft. Madison was that crossing. We got there and found the bridge over the Mississippi River with no U-turns. Yeah us!! We were feeling pretty good about making these extra miles with a minimal amount of extra time. As we approached the bridge in Ft. Madison there was a long line of traffic to get over the bridge. They were totally stopped with engines turned off. Claude turned our engine off, I grabbed my camera and headed up the road to see what was going on. This bridge is on a hinge so it turns to open so that barges could go through. The bridge was completely turned and waiting for a huge barge to get through. Nothing to do but wait it out. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock!!
Now we turned the red Buick south and headed to Nauvoo. Our first stop was the Historic Nauvoo Visitor's Center. There is another called the Joseph Smith Historic Site Visitor's Center which is at the opposite end of Historic Nauvoo. To enter the Joseph Smith properties you begin your tour there. But we chose to start at the Historic Nauvoo Visitor's Center.
In front of the main entrance is a sunstone from the original Nauvoo Temple. Claude has a replica scaled down model of the sunstone in his office. We purchased it in Palmyra, New York years ago.
There are many beautiful exhibits in this visitor's center and several movies. With our limited time we chose to walk through the exhibits and then go outside to tour the Women's Monument.
Years ago when the idea for this garden of statues depicting womens lives was conceived, the sisters in Relief Society were asked to donate to the cost of building the monument garden to women. I remember making the small contribution I was able to make at the time. As a result, I've felt a kinship to this beautiful garden even though I have never been there to see it. I was most happy to remember I could now see in real life what I have only been able to view in pictures. Here are a few of the statues in the gorgeous garden. There are brick paths through the garden, lots of green trees and plants and beautiful flowers. Sometimes the bricks are arranged in circles so that the placement of the statue will be accented.
We left the Historic Nauvoo Visitor's Center armed with a map and some suggestions from the senior missionary couple as to the first places we should see in the afternoon we had left.
Our first stop was the Family Living Center. This is a building that is not historic. It was built specifically to allow visitors to understand how the daily work of living in the Nauvoo period would have been done. There are several centers in this large open room where missionaries in period costumes explain and/or allow the visitors to participate in making the item in their center. The centers were spinning thread, baking in a fireplace & bustle oven, candle making, weaving cloth and rugs, making rope, pottery, and making barrels.
The fun part of the Family Living Center was the rope making. I honestly don't think I've ever watched them make rope before. I've read about it. But in all the old places we have visited in our 40 years of marriage and when I was a child, I don't remember ever watching or participating in rope making. I could tell Katelyn was fascinated watching the people before us finish their rope.
The three of us sat on the benches to wait for the next demonstration. The two men started immediately by asking Katelyn to come up and help. There is a big wheel at one end and they attached three little ropes to it at exact distances apart on the wheel. These three tiny ropes were attached at the same exact spot on another anchor like wooden post the distance of the length of the ropes away from the wheel end. Katelyn was asked to turn that wheel as fast as she could. As she turned the wheel, the 3 ropes twisted together to form one larger rope.
Eventually Claude was asked to help at the anchoring post and I was given a board with three notches in it to keep the 3 strands separate until they could evenly be wrapped and twisted together by Katelyn turning that wheel. I just walked my board with 3 notches along the 3 ropes as they twisted together to keep them evenly twisting. When the rope was a tight as it should be, it was tied off with string and specific knots. Then Katelyn and Claude cut their respective ends at exact the same time. Katelyn was given the rope she made as a souvenier. Such a happy chick maiden!!!
Then we were off to visit the Scovill Bakery. Normally they would be baking things here so you could see the oven work. However, since we were visiting on the Sabbath, they would not be baking. This was a tiny brick building with a bustle oven. It is called a bustle oven because on the outside of the house the bricks protrude like a woman's bustle would have done years ago. Here is a picture of the oven inside and the 'bustle' outside.
We were served some wonderful little gingerbread men cookies that had been prepared the day before. They were soooooo good. We had not eaten since the breakfast buffet at the hotel which only enhanced their soft texture and wonderful flavor.
Then we went to the 'Cultural Hall/Masonic Lodge'. This building was originally built to be the Masonic Lodge but, since it was a larger building in Nauvoo, it was used for plays and lots of community meetings and activities as well as the Masonic purposes. Since the community activities outnumbered the Masonic activities they began to call it the Cultural Hall.
The main level was the stage where plays were performed.
The 2nd floor of this building was a museum of pioneer quilts. These were actually quilts that belonged to pioneers and were donated to the museum. Many were quite intricate. One was a 'tulip quilt' and was just the quilt top. It was made in Nauvoo and carried to Utah in a handcart, then eventually donated to the museum. There was also a 'human hair wreath' in a picture frame. We saw one of these on Mackinaw Island in the officers quarters of the fort. It was a practice many years ago for the women to save the strands of their hair that fell or were brushed out and weave them into these beautiful works of art. Here are a few pictures of some quilts and the human hair wreath.
The third floor was a large open room with beautiful windows along the street side wall. It was used for meetings and dances. It had a loft in it for the band to sit it to play for the dances.
From these 3rd floor windows you could see the spire of the Nauvoo Temple through the trees.
Then we visited a home and shop that was for Claude's enjoyment. John Browning, maker of the Browning guns, was a resident of Nauvoo and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His home was one of the finer ones built in that era. He added on to it and it was eventually his home, store and shop to make and sell his rifles.
I was most fascinated with the huge billows over the fireplace used to heat the metal so it could be pounded into shape.
I was also very fascinated by the labor needed to make one rifle barrel. They used a strip of metal, heated it, pounded it around a metal rod to get a circular shape with a hole running through it. Then to 'rifle' it (create the swirled pattern through the inside of the hole in the barrel) they had to heat another piece of metal and twist it several time through it to make one rifle. So very, very, very labor intensive.
Claude enjoyed and understood the rifle collection. I loved how Claude kept his hands clasped behind his back. I can only imagine the urge he might have felt to try and heft one of this magnificent pieces of history. One of the rifles has a brass-like seal on the wooden end with an etching of the Nauvoo Temple. Browning was very committed to the Church.
The Browning home had a few things that I had not seen before. One was a 'cradle butter churn'. The tour guide said they could put their baby on top and rock them back and forth to go to sleep at the same time they made their butter. I'm pretty gullible some times. I believed him about the rocking. I should ask Claude if he believed that part? Anyway, I never saw a 'cradle butter churn' before.
The other thing was a door in the floor of the kitchen. When you lifted it up, there were stairs to the cellar level. In that cellar was a well. This meant Mrs. Browning didn't have to go outside in the winter to get water from a well, she just went to her cellar via this door in the floor of her kitchen. Way cool!! Literally!!
Where to go next??? We were trying to pick and choose the sites we each wanted to see the most in the short afternoon we had. We decided to walk back down and across the street to the 'Print Shop' (a.k.a. Times & Seasons). Some of the buildings have been reconstructed on a different site than they originally stood. This may have been one of those.
The thing I learned while in this building...was the alphabet pieces of typeset were kept in a 'case'. It was very important that the letters be kept in exactly the correct cube so they could be retrieved quickly and put in their boxes and set in the printing press. The capital letters were kept in the 'upper' portion of the case and the small letters were kept in the 'lower' portion of the case. Hence the terms 'upper case' for capital letters and 'lower case' for smaller letters.
The other thing was that the little frames that hold all those letters had spacers in them to keep the letters tight and in their place. These metal blocks that held spaces were called 'furniture'. At one point in Nauvoo history the mobs came in and destroyed the Times & Season's press and the 'furniture'. They really were destroying their metal blocks that were hold spaces and kept letters tight in their place when they destroyed the 'furniture' in the Times and Seasons printing office.
The Print Shop was on the corner, next to it was the John Taylor home, then the Post Office and finally the Tin Shop.
From the Print Shop we walked to a place suggested to us by the senior missionaries at the Visitor's Center called the 'Brickyard'. Once again Katelyn was fascinated with the bricks. They had several smaller bricks on display. The young fella gave us a description of how the bricks were made, the colors the making yielded, the cost per brick, etc. When he finished his explanation, he then gave Katelyn one of the little red bricks from Nauvoo. She again, was one very happy young lady. She really wanted one of those as a treasure. I already had one that belonged to Mimi and Papa. She had been looking at it in our home and really loved that little red brick. Now she had one of her own.
Between the Brickyard and walking back to the Post Office, we pasted Lucy Mack Smith's home. She is the Prophet Joseph Smith's mother.
We also passed a log home with a little lean-to like structure on the back. This was the home of a family and the back portion was the school house.
Then we headed back to see what the Post Office was about. Turns out the people who ran the post office in that day could not live on what they earned from working a post office. So they usually sold goods as well. This post office had the cubby holes to put everone's mail in. They also had a wall of kitchen things and a wall of paper type goods (books & paper) and a back section with farming tools. One of the tools they had was a 'yoke' with two buckets hanging from the sides. Families would have used these to carry water or things from the garden in. Several of the children got to put these on their shoulders to try them out.
We drove down a few blocks to the Joseph Smith Historic Site area. A lot of these buildings are owned by the Community of Christ church. This was a break-off for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Joseph Smith's son was it's first leader. There were some who believed the succession in the presidency of the Church should be patriarchal and go from father to eldest son. These became disaffected and created the Re-organized Church of Jesus Christ which later became the Community of Christ.
The buildings in the Joseph Smith Historice Site area are: Joseph Smith Historic Site Visitor's Center, the Homestead, the Mansion House, the Nauvoo House, the Red Brick Store, and the Smith Family Cemetary.
We visited the Smith Family Cemetary. After the martyrdom of Joseph & Hyrum in Carthage Jail, their bodies were moved several times to keep people from finding their graves and taking their bodies. Sounds awful but such were the sentiments of the mobs and those with strong feelings against the Mormons. Today Hyrum, Emma and Joseph Smith rest in the Smith family cemetary.
Joseph Smith, Sr. & Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph & Hyrum Smith's father and mother are also buried in this cemetary.
They rest close to the banks of the Mississippi River. It is a beautiful spot.
One of the places in this area I really wanted to visit was the 'Red Brick Store'. This building is where the Relief Society was organized. Many other very important things happened here. But since I serve as Stake Relief Society president at Church right now, I felt a particular pull to visit this building.
Claude and Katelyn are to the left of this picture of the Red Brick Store. The entry level is set up just like a store with items you can purchase. We were allowed to visit the 2nd floor at will.
Behind the store front and on the first level was an office for sales. The view from the window was so peaceful.
There were stairs across from this sales office that led up to the 2nd floor where Joseph Smith's office would have been.
There was also a large room where the Relief Society would have been organized.
By this point we were nearing the end of our tour afternoon in Nauvoo. We had only had a bit of breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet and the little gingerbread man at the Scovill Bakery. I was beginning to feel a bit like Esau and was better able to understand his selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. We went back to the main level and talked with the lady sitting there. They had root beers that were cold. She really didn't have to press very hard to sell us a root beer. Claude and I also purchased a copy of the complete Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. When visiting Kirtland, Ohio years ago we thought about and didn't purchase this complete Joseph Smith Translation. Since the Community of Christ church has ownership of this volume, you must get it from them. This time we determined to purchase the book to have it all together. Really, most of it has been authorized by them to be included in our scriptures. So we have the majority of it but we really wanted the book with all of his work in it. So with a refreshing root beer each in our hands and our book we headed outside to sit on a bench in the shade of a huge tree and watch the Mississippi River flow by, feel the gentle breeze and enjoy that cold root beer. It was a most pleasant few moments there reflecting on all we had been able to see and the few places we were going to stop after our rest. Just a delight moment in the afternoon.
After our tiny break we walked to these places. We could not go in because we didn't go to the Joseph Smith Historic Site Visitor's Center to begin looking at these buildings. But we were about out of time and wanted to at least see them from the outside before things closed down.
We saw the Mansion House.
We saw the Nauvoo House.
And we saw the Homestead.
Now we had two more stops before heading to our hotel for the night in Keokuk, Iowa. The first of these was Parley Street.
When the Saints were expelled from Nauvoo in February, they would have pulled wagons and pushed handcarts down this street to where the ferry would take them across the Mississippi with chunks of ice floating in it to the Iowa side of the River. Along this street are signs with quotes from the pioneers who left from Nauvoo to make that trek across the plains to the Rocky Mountains. They left behind homes, land, orchards, businesses, all that they spent some 10+ years cultivating and building out of what had been a swamp on the banks of the Mississippi River. Parley Street in February of a very cold, snowy year could have been a defeating experience. I just wanted to be on that street and see how it stops at the Mississippi River and ponder a bit about the strength of these people seeking safety and the ability to worship in peace. To find a spot where they could once again clear the ground, build homes and businesses, places to worship and temples, grow their food and teach their children. Here is Parley Street and the Mississippi River. There is a park beside Parley Street now and there was a ferry with a wagon on it sitting in the park.
There is also a pavilion that is enclosed and covered with the names of those who left Nauvoo and headed west. I took pictures of the names that may be Claude's family for him to have with his family history. It was a very moving place to be. We had marveled at all the hard work involved in just building what they did in such a short space of years. We know they completed the Nauvoo Temple and would dedicate it as they were being expelled. How grateful I am for their enduring in the face of unbelievable hardship. For that moment in time on that Sunday was a truly moving and tender moment for me standing on the banks of the Mississippi River in Nauvoo, Illinois.
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