052515

We visited the RLDS (oh, sorry, Community of Christ) site again today to finish off with the artifacts we missed last week that we didn't get to see in the Visitor's Center.  There were only a couple of things we missed, such as the old headstones of Joseph, Hyrum and Emma Smith, the story about how they were moved back in 1928 to higher ground and finally placed them in their final resting place (see earlier post).  Of course, they don't allow pictures inside their buildings or visitors center.  However, we moved on to the "Red Brick Store", their sales store, and managed to get some pictures there.  No signs so, why not?  They had some nice people there and they weren't so antagonistic to us missionaries.

The upper room of the Red Brick Store where the Relief Society was organized and held their meetings.  The RLDS Church (Community of Christ) also held meetings here at one time.

Joseph Smith's desk in the upper room.

We were also able to talk to an archeologist about the work she was doing.  These were located in the basement of the store. She was putting together remnants of items they have found at the Nauvoo Mansion.  She was fascinating and very excited about her worked and we had a delightful conversation with her.  An altogether different experience from the previous encounter with the tour guide a few days before.  It was actually like talking to one of our missionaries and she didn't seem to have an axe to grind.  Very pleasant and informative.

More items from the dig.  She had all kinds of stories about many of the items she was working with so it was very informative and interesting.

052415

Just some catching up.

Flowers in our front yard.  However, recent rains knocked them down and they are about gone for the season.  So much rain in the last few days.

Someone is going to be wearing this one.  We just haven't been to the post office to ship it out yet.  Cute, huh?  One of the bookstores in Nauvoo is a chain store from Kalifornia.  They have all of Arlene's points on records so we've picked up a couple of used books.  We were in today and I asked where they got all of these nice, used books from.  He said, "California".  That's just weird!

This is our ward building in Burlington, Iowa.

This is the back end of the parking lot.  Way across the lot are a few houses.  No idea who mows this but that is quite a few acres of grass to mow and play games on for Mutual nights.  Everyone here has riding mowers.  It's crazy.

On Sunday night the Salden's invited the four couples over for dinner.  We all go up to Burlington for church together.  It was Sister Salden's birthday but she wanted to share her day with all of us.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes (w/marshmallows), corn, string beans, broccoli salad, french bread, and dessert.  It was pretty good eating.  No one has a BBQ here so it's mostly crock pot or oven faire.  Buit, it's usually pretty good stuff.

Sister Allred, Mom, Sister Salden, Brother Allred, Sister Bender, Brother Salden...

Brother Allred, Sister Bender, Brother Salden, Brother Bender.  Obviously, I am taking the picts. 

Check tomorrow for more pictures...

051815

We visited the Joseph Smith site today.  It is maintained and owned by the Community of Christ (the old Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or RLDS Church that spun off from the LDS church when the LDS church went West in 1846 from Nauvoo).  It is pretty odd to listen to them talk about the Prophet Joseph Smith and totally ignore what happened after he was martyred in 1844.  But, they own a few of the historical sites here in Nauvoo so, in order to see them, we need to visit their facilities, pay their fees, and listen to their version of history as it happened in Nauvoo after the Prophet's death.  They follow the father to son succession from Joseph Smith, Jr to Joseph Smith III, his surviving son that stayed behind with his mother, Emma Smith, when Brigham Young took the LDS Church out West to escape any further persecution.

All of the sites have a sign with some info on them.  The homestead is where Joseph/Emma lived most of the time.  Note that you need to go to the CoC visitor's Center to meet with a tour guide to enter the buildings and pay a $3 "preservation" fee.  The guide was nice but she threw in zingers every once in a while indicating the differences between her church and ours.  It was kind of unnecessary.  We need to be in our missionary attire when we are out anywhere so it was kind of obvious.  We did not take the bait.  It's their house and we wanted to see what they had to offer "tourist".

Homestead and cabin.  they've been added onto a couple of times.  Joseph/Emma lived in the cabin and then moved to the house when it replaced the cabin.  Eventually their son, JS III occupied the house and added on more rooms for his family.

Joseph and Hyrum were laid to rest next to each other, eventually.  Emma was laid to rest next to Joseph eventually when she passed many years later.  This is next to the homestead.  The average age for death was 40 for women and 36 for men.  Emma lived to be 75.  Quite old for people of the late 1800s.

Othere are buried here.  Joseph Smith, III, his family members, Joseph Smith, Jr, Lucy Mack Smith (Joseph Smith's mother and father).  These are the only headstones here.  The Mississippi is in the background.

A listing of others buried here.  However, no headstones are evident.  I asked the guide if they could still be buried here and she said no.  All of the new burials are done in Independence, Missouri.  This list is of Smith family and friends buried here.

Sign for cemetery

View of Joseph/Emma/Hyrum headstones from other side of cemetery

The Mansion House.  Joseph/Emma only lived here for a very short few months before he was martyred.  His body laid in state here till he was buried.  The house was much larger at the time as it was used as a hotel during the time for so many people visiting Nauvoo.   Oddly enough, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside the buildings so there are no pictures inside.  Sorry.  They did have some interesting stuff to look at, though.

The Mansion House info sign.

The Nauvoo House was supposed to be a Hotel near the river for people to stay at when they first got to the city.  It was supposed to be much larger it is now, up to 5 stories.  The base you see is very wide and the building was rebuilt to give an idea of what it was supposed to be like.

The cornerstone behind shows how big the original Nauvoo House was supposed to be.  Really large!

Info sign for the Nauvoo House.  You can't enter the Nauvoo House to look at it.  The church rents it out at $15 per person per night.  They made that very clear.   Parties of 20 or larger only.  This is a money maker for the Community of Christ to cover the cost of maintaining the site but the emphasis was not on Joseph Smith, it seemed to be elsewhere in their ministries.  It was just a beginning for them.  I didn't get a good grasp on what their focus is today and there were comments made about the temple ceremony but got the distinct idea they had no idea what it was for, obviously.  That would have come after the Nauvoo time period.

051115_B

...continuing...

This is a better shot of the first repeating rifle by Browning.  the "clip" slides in sideways from 5 to 25 shots.  Notice the hammer is on the bottom!

In the backyard of the Browning Shoppe, amongst the spring flowers, when they were digging up the foundation, they found a small grave that was one of the graves of the Browning children that died right after childbirth.  They reburied it and placed a fence around it.  Notice it is in direct line to the temple from the family home.

On to the Cultural Hall where we looked at the dance hall that was discovered when the building was purchased back from the owners and then renovated.  Oh, and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a laptop for one of the lady guide Sisters that works there.  It just never seems to not find me no matter what I do...

Hey, remember that field of prairie grass that was burned just a few weeks ago?

It's about a foot tall now.  They will do another burning in August some time.  Can't wait!

So, we've learned a couple of things.  One is that you simply do not need all that stuff you are collecting!  If you don't need it, don't buy it!  If you aren't using it, give it to someone that can use it.  they'll get more use out of it.  We seem to be doing quite nicely without all that stuff we accumulated over all of our years of marriage and don't miss it.

Had a great talk with Elder Kevin yesterday.  He's 6 months into his mission!  Yeah!

051115_A

Another exciting week here in Nauvoo, the "City Beautiful".   The shutdown is officially over and the temple has opened for business Monday through Saturday.  Temple Engineers that are on a mission have Mondays off as a P-Day so we don't start till Tuesdays.  The first shift, for me, is at 5 PM on Tuesday at 5 PM.  Then I work Wednesday/Thursday the morning shift from 7 AM to 1 PM.  However, in order to not forget my ordinance work, I have opted to work an ordinance shift on Thursday evenings from 2:30 PM till 10 PM.  Fridays are 2 PM till 10 PM and Saturdays are 6 AM till 2 PM.  So the weeks are pretty filled with work and stuff to do.

So, today we did more genealogy and found a town about 2 hours away that has 36 listed Seger's buried there and they are still being planted there.  I couldn't find any direct relationship to any of my family but it is worth a look see in the future.

We did hit some more of the sites to see here in Nauvoo:

The Brick Yard.  Got the demo for how they used to build bricks in Nauvoo.  They had 7 brick yards at one time.  Made 45,000 to 60,000 bricks at a time.  That's a lot of brick's.  It took about 50,000 bricks to build a house.

Stopped by Lucy Mack Smith's house, the Prophet's mother.  This is the steepest staircase in Nauvoo.  They really like steep staircases here, for some odd reason.  

They got this armoire up that staircase.  I'm not sure how, but they did.  Lucy Mack Smith had arthritis pretty bad so she stayed downstairs.  Wonder why?

Arlene liked the tiny, tiny, real shoes on top of this dresser.

Stopped at the one room school house, the Calvin Pendleton School and Home.  So, you think your school is over-crowded?

We then stopped at the Browning Gun Shoppe.   The man that started the Browning gun company was a member and started in Nauvoo.  His son perfected things later on.  This is his gun cabinet.  He created the first repeating rifle in the center.

050215

Well, we survived the shutdown of spring 2015 and had to go do something else for a change.  The decision was to go visit some of my long departed relatives up in Earlville, Iowa.  That is about 200 miles about Nauvoo.  So, we headed up there Saturday morning with a brief stop at Costco since it was on the way and at the 100 mile mark, a good time for a break.

The Lorum Joel and Joel Seger monolith monument.  The small headstones in front are for various members of the family.  Grandmother, mother, father, Alfred, Addie, and another set of mother and father "stones".  Not sure who is under which mother/father stones but I can guess.

In addition, we found several other headstones for other Segers that were listed as well as some others that were listed in files for the cemetery.  We also found several of their kids headstones there.  All in all, a good day.

My Great Great Grandfather/Grandmother (Sarah Akin)

My Great Great Great Grandfather/Grandmother.  We're not sure how Mattie Orcott Muzzy figures into things but there is a stone on the ground that says "grandmother" so we're thinking that is for her.  In this case, it would be her.  May be Hannah's mom but that is just a guess.

There are two other sides but one says, "Gone but not forgotten" and the other lists two of Lorum's children that died at a young age that I didn't know about.  At any rate, pretty cool stuff.

BTW, one thing about back in Iowa, everywhere you drive, there are cemeteries and they are huge!  Cemeteries in the West are small and there aren't very many but out here they are everywhere and just hundreds of headstones, all of which are above ground and are really big.  I guess if you gotta die, you need to go out in style...or something like that....

050115

Catching up a bit here...

We had a nice day visiting a couple more sites in Nauvoo after the first of the month.  The Seventies Hall was the old meeting hall for the missionaries when all of the Saints were here in Nauvoo.  It's a beautiful building that was built some years ago.

Front of the Seventies Hall.  Note the inscription at the top.

We got to stand at the front of the hall at the lectern and pose for this picture.  Quite an honor.  ...because we are temple missionaries...I bet you say that to all the missionaries...

The recovered stone at the center, top is one of the original star stones from the original Nauvoo temple and one of the few remaining pieces left.

We then walked down the "Trail of Hope" where they have excerpts from diaries of the pioneers as they left Nauvoo.  Some of the comments are real tear jerkers.

Trail of Hope looking North.  Note signboards on left.  They are every 20 feet or so for a 1/4 mile down to the river.

Parley Street heads down towards the Mississippi where the Saints headed West for the Salt Lake Valley.  The description of this road was being filled with wagons for many days, sun up to sun down in February.  It got so cold that the Mississippi was frozen over the last few days so they could just walk across.

It's much farther across now than in 1846.  A dam was built in 1913 to harness the power of the river and raised the river about 20 feet.  It's pretty shallow most of the way across except in the cent where the barges travel up and down the river.

The Saints floated across the river, where they could, with their wagons on these barges.

As the Saints left Nauvoo, they cast their last glances at their beloved temple, sitting on the hill, before walking across the river.  This is about what it would have looked like as they walked away from Nauvoo on Parley Street.