NAUVOO PANORAMA: Views of Nauvoo before, during, and after its rise by JANATH R. CANNON (Author)

NAUVOO PANORAMA: Views of Nauvoo before, during, and after its rise

by Janath R. Cannon

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

The Algonquins (some say the Ojibwas) gave the river its name - "Father of Waters" - Mississippi.

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Two Indian chiefs, Black Hawk and Keokuk, left their names to history;

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The Democratic Association of Quincy, for example, appointed committee to help them, stating that "the strangers recently arrived here from the state of Missouri, known by the name of the 'Latter-day Saints,' are entitled to our sympathy and kindest regard." The kindness of the Quincy citizens would be remembered with gratitude by the Saints and their descendants.

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On another occasion a hundred chiefs and their families came across the river from their encampment near Montrose to see Joseph. He addressed them in the grove:

 I advised them to cease killing each other and warring with other tribes; also to keep peace with the whites; all of which was interpreted to them.

 [Chief] Keokuk replied that he had a Book of Mormon at his wigwam.... "I believe," he said, "you are a great and good man... I also am a son of the Great Spirit. I have heard your advice - we intend to quit fighting, and follow the good talk you have given us."

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The first week in October 1845 the Saints met in the Nauvoo Temple, in the first and last official General Conference ever held there.

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"One small nursery may produce many thousands of fruit trees, while they are small. But as they expand towards maturity, they must needs be transplanted, in order to have room to grow and produce the natural fruits. So it is with us." -Parley P. Pratt, October 1845 General Conference, Nauvoo Temple.

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In the mid-1900's a local "Grape Festival" began to celebrate the two tasty foods with a pageant, a parade, and other traditional festivities.

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Seven years later the congregation moved into their own church, a simple one-story building on Mulholland Street. Stoutly constructed of limestone blocks - at least some of them from the ruined Nauvoo Temple - it is still standing as the American Legion Hall.

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On the morning of 19 February 1937 two men stood in a drenching rain on the Nauvoo Temple block. They stepped off of the frontage of the lot Hampton noted that "an old ice barn was back in the Lot not far from the old Well that fed the font in the Temple." Then Jack Smith and Wilford Wood went to the bank to meet with the cashier Mr. Reinhardt, and the vice-president of the bank Mr. Anton. There they tried to purchase the lot they had examined. At first they had no success. Mr. Wood recorded:

It seemed as though no agreement could be made as I was limited to the price I could pay. An influence came to me and I said, "Are you going to try and make me pay an exhorbant [sic] price for the blood of a martyred prophet when you know this property rightfully belongs to the Mormon people?" I felt the spirit of the Prophet Joseph in that place. Mr. Anton said we will sell the lot for $900. I grasped his hand and then the hand of the Cashier of the Bank and the agreement was made and signed. We parted the best of friends.

The next day at the bank sale in Carthage The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became the legal owner of the first piece of temple property to return to the church. Wilford Wood a furrier from Bountiful, Utah, was a visionary man as well as a persistent bargainer. For nearly a quarter of a century he bought historical properties he thought his church should own, often paying for them himself. In Nauvoo he purchased three-fourths the temple block properties, the Snow-Ashby duplex, the Times and Seasons Building, and the John Taylor home next to it. His correspondence with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints clearly expressed his vision:

I would like to see the old trail so well preserved that each point would be a landing field with a beacon light to guide the old as well as the young along their way... How lasting it would be if men were trained the same as they are for seminary work and stand at each one of these important spots prepared to tell the whole truth of those wonderful events with a spirit that would tarry with both stranger and friend. They would know they had been on sacred ground.

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Frequent visitors swelled the attendance, especially during such festive times as the annual performance of the pageant, the City of Joseph. Starting in 1976, thousands of spectators came from the West and around the country to sit on the hillside below the chapel and view the musical story of Old Nauvoo.

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