It’s a warm Sunday evening in April, and the mighty Mississippi, festooned in the reflected fuchsia of the setting sun, looks positively benign from the wooded banks of this western Illinois town. I sit amidst family groups of Mormon pilgrims who have come not so much to enjoy the sunset, but to absorb the spirit of the place.
It was from this very spot back in February of 1845 that their spiritual ancestors found themselves forced to flee across a forbidding, ice-covered Mississippi. Ahead of them lay they knew not what. But behind them lay something they knew all too well: intolerance and persecution, and the grave of their beloved prophet, Joseph Smith, shot by an angry mob as he awaited trial at the nearby Carthage jail on June 27, 1844.
This had not been the first time that the new sect had been forced to abandon its legally obtained lands. Twice before they had been driven off–first in Kirkland, Ohio, and then in ironically named Liberty, Mo., where the governor had gone so far as to issue an extermination order. But Nauvoo (NAW-voo), a town that they had hewed from a swampy wilderness in ostensibly more tolerant Illinois, promised to be different. It proved to be even worse.
Each year, some 250,000 people–the majority of them Mormons–make the pilgrimage to their religion’s penultimate promised land to learn more about the trials and tribulations, both natural and manmade, that their ancestors, reverentially known as “the pioneers,” had faced. This year’s attendance promises to be even larger, however, as Mormons worldwide celebrate the bicentennial of the birth–on Dec. 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vt.–of Joseph Smith.
Those coming to pay their respects to his earthly remains will be treated to a special, nightly outdoor pageant (beginning this Friday, July 8) commemorating his life and the religion he founded in Fayette, N.Y., in 1830.
For adherents of the now 12-million-strong religion, the sunset walk down the Trail of Hope, a path to the river punctuated by excerpts–some mournful, some hopeful–from the journals of those about to set off, is de rigueur. It is here that I, a historically inclined “gentile” (as all non-Mormons are termed), have joined them as, atop wooden benches or driftwood logs, they gaze off into the western sky and ponder the 1,000-mile journey to Utah, where, in July of 1847, their people would finally find peace.
Replicas of a Conestoga wagon and the wooden flatboats used to ferry them across the mighty Mississippi remind us how arduous that journey would be. Across the gravel road, the Pioneer Exodus Memorial, with its columns of inscribed names, reminds us of those who would perish en route.
Unfortunately, Sunday is the only night the musical variety show “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” isn’t playing at the rebuilt Cultural Hall. But an even more luminary show awaits as I turn back to the east: a full moon rising above the rectangular, neoclassic limestone temple with its tower reaching to 161 feet, high atop the river bluff.
Abandoned at the time of the exodus, the temple was burned by arsonists, then ravaged by a tornado, only to be completely reconstructed on its original site in 2002.
As a gentile, I will not be allowed inside the temple in the morning, so I make several circuits around its impressive, illuminated exterior before retiring to the modern comfort of my 1860 guesthouse, complete with introductory videos to Mormonism.
The next morning I make my way to the spacious Nauvoo Visitors’ Center, built and run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Dark-suited elders and sisters–most fulfilling their two-year missionary posting–welcome and direct me to the commodious auditorium for the day’s first screening of “Remembering Nauvoo,” a 20-minute warm-and-fuzzy video that tells the story of the settlement that Smith christened with the Hebrew words meaning “beautiful place.” Not surprisingly, it highlights the piety and industry of the pioneers without mentioning either the “p” word (polygamy) or the fact that it had been internal dissent that had precipitated Smith’s arrest and fatal confinement.
Back in the main exhibit hall, I study the detailed scale model of the Nauvoo of 1845, a thriving community of some 11,000 people. As the second largest city in the state (Chicago had 12,000), Nauvoo wielded formidable political power–power that was resented all the more when Smith announced his candidacy for president of the United States in 1844.
I stroll amongst the life-size bronze tableaux in the Monument to Women Garden before boarding a modern-day Conestoga wagon–complete with two Belgian draft horses–for the hour-long, narrated tour of the more than 40 meticulously restored brick homes, shops and public buildings of old Nauvoo. Though Sister Pusey encourages us to hop off at any of the brief stops and rejoin a later tour, I wait until afterward to drop in on the many period-costumed Mormon missionaries playing the parts of the pioneers. At the Scovil Bakery I get to try some frontier gingerbread, while at the Browning Arms Co., I learn about the repeating rifles that would serve the persecuted Mormons so well.
Appropriately enough, my last stop is the home of woodworker Brigham Young, another native of Vermont. It was Young, then the senior member of the Council of the 12 Apostles, who would succeed Smith, and who, after another year of trouble with Nauvoo’s anti-Mormon neighbors, concluded that their future lay in the unpopulated Western desert.
While the majority of Nauvoo’s residents would follow Young to Utah, a minority believed Smith could only be succeeded by his son, then a boy of 11. They chose to remain in Illinois and, by renouncing polygamy, were allowed to do so. In 1850, they coalesced in the town of Amboy and founded the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Amboy in 1850. Now known as the Community of Christ, this is the group that initiated the restoration of Nauvoo in 1917 when it obtained ownership of the Joseph Smith Homestead, the two-story log cabin that housed the prophet when he first arrived in 1839.
Today, the Community of Christ controls not only the homestead, but the nearby Mansion House, into which Smith and his family would move in 1843, and the restored Smith family cemetery. Access to these properties–clearly the most important historically–comes only via the $2 preservation fee, hour-long walking tour that begins at the Joseph Smith Historic Center Visitors’ Center (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
With my time running short, I forsake a leisurely stroll through the pioneer cemetery and rush the 24 miles to Carthage, the Hancock County seat, and its restored red-limestone jail. I am just in time to join Sister Sheppard’s last tour, a group of 25 British Mormons who are completing a 10-day tour of the sites associated with the founding of their religion.
Carthage, I soon realize, may well be the spiritual highlight of their trip, for it was here that Joseph Smith and his older brother, Hyrum, were shot and killed (or in Mormon terminology “martyred”) that June afternoon.
After a brief stop in the jailer’s living quarters downstairs, we reassemble in the upstairs prison cell, where the afternoon air hangs thick and stale thanks to the three-foot-thick walls and narrow, slit windows. While some of the British rub their hands reverentially over the bars and windowsills, Sister Sheppard explains that it was the stifling heat that had induced the guards to let their four prisoners adjourn to the adjacent jailer’s bedroom.
Inside what is now known as the Martyrdom Room, we solemnly take our seats before an audiotape re-creates the storming of the room and the deaths of Hyrum and Joseph as related by eyewitness John Taylor, an Englishman who would succeed Brigham Young as third president in 1880. At the appropriate moments, Sister Sheppard directs our attention to the hole in the door caused by the bullet that killed Hyrum instantly and the window from which Joseph fell dead into the courtyard below.
Taylor’s impassioned and emotional words cause widespread tears, and prompt Sister Sheppard to open the floor to a free-flowing discussion. The comments are mostly personal, but even as a non-believer, I can’t help but be moved by the spirit of the place and impressed by the effect that what happened here has continued to have on American–and now world–history.
Not surprisingly, the murder of the two Smith brothers went unpunished, as the killers, though widely known, were never publicly identified. Just last year, however, in an effort to atone for the state’s part in the persecution of the Mormons, the Illinois legislature passed House Resolution 793, expressing “official regret.” Though the apology arrived much too late for the pioneers, it came just in time for this year’s surge of bicentennial visitors.
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Nauvoo is on the Mississippi River, astride scenic Illinois Highway 96, roughly 270 miles southwest of Chicago.
TOURS
Historic Nauvoo can be walked or driven (plenty of parking, spaced conveniently) independently, but the most evocative way to see it is via the free, horse-drawn Conestoga wagon tour that departs from the LDS Visitors’ Center, Main and Young Streets, every half hour between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday year-round, weather permitting. To get inside the two Joseph Smith houses, however, you must be on the guided walking tour ($2 preservation fee) which departs from the Community of Christ Visitors’ Center at 149 Water St. (9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday March 1 through Nov. 30, with a reduced schedule the remainder of the year).
In Carthage, tours of the Old Carthage Jail, 307 Walnut St., are also free (8 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday year-round).
PERFORMANCES
The bicentennial Nauvoo Pageant will be staged at 8:45 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday from July 8 through Aug. 5 across from the LDS Visitors’ Center on Partridge Street; tickets are not required.
The musical variety show “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” plays twice every evening except Sunday at 7 and 8:15 in the Cultural Hall. From late fall through spring, the 8:15 show is dropped. Tickets are free, but must be secured in advance at any of the historic sites in Old Nauvoo.
“Just Plain Anna-Amanda,” a half-hour musical for children, is staged in the Cultural Hall at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily through Aug. 19. Again, tickets are free but must be secured in advance.
“Sunset by the Mississippi,” an hour-long family variety show, takes place at 8:15 p.m. every evening except Sunday, May through August, at the foot of Parley Street; tickets are not required.
WHERE TO STAY
To immerse yourself in the pioneer spirit, try staying at one of these historic properties: Hotel Nauvoo (1290 Mulholland St.; 217-453-2211; www.hotelnauvoo.com; $49-$99); the Temple House (1240 Mulholland; 866-453-6977; www.nauvootemplehouse.com; $65-$100); Ellis Sanders House (1285 Sidney St.; 888-453-2444; www.ellissandershouse.com; $115-$139); Rufus Abbott Manor (1910 Ripley St.; 888-299-3688; www.rufusabbottmanor.com; $85-$115); the White House Inn (1475 Mulholland St.; 217-453-6734; www.whitehouseinnauvoo.com; $50-$90). For traditional motel options, head for the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites (1875 Mulholland St.; 800-416-4470; www.nauvoofamilyinn.com; $49-$139) or the Motel Nauvoo (1610 Mulholland St.; 217-453-2219; $49-$89).
INFORMATION
Nauvoo Tourist Information Center, 1295 Mulholland St., Box 500, Nauvoo, IL 62354; 800-NAUVOO1 (628-8661); www.beautifulnauvoo.com.
LDS sites: Box 215, Nauvoo, IL 62354; 888-453-6434; www.historicnauvoo.net.
Community of Christ sites: Joseph Smith Historic Site, Box 338, Nauvoo, IL 62354; 217-453-2246; www.cofchrist.org/js.
— Marshall S. Berdan
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ctc-travel@tribune.com
