The Nauvoo House

stephenstrent7
17 minutes ago
12 min read

The Unfinished Nauvoo House, by Trent Stephens, drawn from the original oil on canvas, by David Hyrum Smith, circa 1865.

Where Science Meets the Doctrine and Covenants, for the Come Follow Me lesson Oct 27-Nov 2; Doctrine and Covenants 124

It seems clear to me that Doctrine and Covenants section 124 is a good example of the notion that all scripture is not equal. Other examples are sections 127 and 128, which are epistles from Joseph Smith to the Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois, September 1 and 7, 1842. Part of those letters are somewhat mundane. For example, in 127:1-2, Joseph explains why he is not in Nauvoo at the time. Those letters are much like Paul’s letters to the various churches, as recorded in the New Testament, as for example in Romans 1:6-13, where Paul wishes he were in Rome. These portions of the letters from Paul and Joseph Smith are more church history than church doctrine. Likewise, in my opinion, much of Doctrine and Covenants section 124 is Church history, not doctrine. Some of that history deals with the Nauvoo Temple and the early leadership of the Church, and thus, in my opinion, is why it was included in the 1844 edition, and since. However, much of the discussion of the Nauvoo House, again, in my opinion, falls into that realm of mostly Church history. Section 124 first appeared in the 1844 edition, which was printed in the chaotic aftermath of Joseph and Hyrum’s martyrdom, and was not canonized at the time of printing, but was canonized with the rest of the scripture in General Conference, on October 10, 1880.¹

According to Doctrine and Covenants 124:22-24 and 56-76, received January 19, 1841, in addition to the Nauvoo Temple, where baptisms for the dead could be performed, the Saints were to build a boarding house. Verses 22-23 state, “…a house unto my name, such a one as my servant Joseph shall show unto them, upon the place which he shall show unto them also. And it shall be for a house for boarding, a house that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein; therefore let it be a good house, worthy of all acceptation, that the weary traveler may find health and safety while he shall contemplate the word of the Lord; and the cornerstone I have appointed for Zion.”

Verses 56-59 state, “And now I say unto you, as pertaining to my boarding house which I have commanded you to build for the boarding of strangers, let it be built unto my name, and let my name be named upon it, and let my servant Joseph and his house have place therein, from generation to generation. For this anointing have I put upon his head, that his blessing shall also be put upon the head of his posterity after him. And as I said unto Abraham concerning the kindreds of the earth, even so I say unto my servant Joseph: In thee and in thy seed shall the kindred of the earth be blessed. Therefore, let my servant Joseph and his seed after him have place in that house, from generation to generation, forever and ever, saith the Lord.”

We are told in verse 60 to, “…let the name of that house be called Nauvoo House; and let it be a delightful habitation for man, and a resting-place for the weary traveler, that he may contemplate the glory of Zion, and the glory of this, the cornerstone thereof…”

In verse 62, George Miller, Lyman Wight, John Snider, and Peter Haws, were placed in charge of building that house. They created the Nauvoo House Association on February 23, 1841. In verses 64-72, they were told to sell stock in the house from $50 to $15,000. George Miller apparently had been converted more to Joseph Smith than to the Church. Before joining the Church, he had given thousands of bushels of grain to Mormon refugees from Missouri. He first met Joseph and heard him speak in 1839 and joined the Church. He clashed with Brigham Young, and left the Church in 1847. He traveled to Texas in 1848 to join Lyman Wight’s group, but recognizing Wight as a pretender, he traveled to Michigan to join James Strang. Miller died in 1856.²

Apparently, by 1843, the organizing committee was very disorganized. They had not yet even drawn up plans for the hotel, and Lyman Wight evidently had lost a considerable number of the stock certificates, “…leaving a question as to what certificates were actually still extant. To solve this problem, Miller proposed publishing a notice requesting that stockholders ‘give account of the date and numbers of the certificate[s]’ that they held and that those certificates lost by Wight then be invalidated. Miller also recommended that a building plan of the house be created and that ‘a bill of the lumber and other materials’ necessary for construction be given to the council.”³

Lyman Wight had joined the Church in November 1830. He was the first high priest ordained, and was second in command of Zion’s Camp. He claimed that all disease and medicine were of the devil (1834), and he spoke against Doctrine and Covenants (1837). He was taken by the Missouri mob in 1838, and was in Liberty Jail with the prophet. He was ordained an apostle in 1841—and raised funds for the Nauvoo Temple. After the martyrdom, he led 150 saints to Texas as a splinter group; he was disfellowshipped 1848; and died in Texas in 1858.⁴

John Snider was baptized in 1836, and served a mission to England in 1837. He moved to Missouri in 1838, and was in Nauvoo by 1840. In 1842, he served a mission in England collecting money for the Nauvoo Temple. He came back to Nauvoo in 1843 with 157 British Saints, and was authorized to administer baptisms for the dead in the [apparently Mississippi] river before the font in the Nauvoo Temple was available. After the martyrdom, he went to Toronto, back to Nauvoo in 1847 and then to California seeking gold. He died 1875 in Salt Lake City.⁵

Peter Haws was converted in Canada. He owned considerable property and a steam-driven sawmill near Nauvoo and helped many of the poor there. He served a mission to gain funds for the Nauvoo Temple. He left the Church in 1848 and went to Texas, where he joined Wight’s for a time, but left them, and died in 1862 in Nevada.⁶

Lucien Woodworth designed the Nauvoo House with the intent that it would have two large wings, each 120 feet long, by 40 feet wide, and four stories in height; it would have rooms to accommodate 300 visitors. In a “grand ceremony” on October 2, 1841, construction began with the laying of the southeast cornerstone, in which Joseph Smith placed the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. Construction of the Nauvoo House and the Nauvoo Temple progressed simultaneously. Workers cut lumber from as far away as Michigan, they quarried stone, and donated labor for both buildings.⁷

In Doctrine and Covenants 124:74-111, Vinson Knight, Hyrum Smith, Isaac Galland, William Marks, Henry G. Sherwood, William Law, and Amos Davies were all specifically told to buy stock in the house. Verse 119 states, “…let no man pay stock to the quorum of the Nauvoo House unless he shall be a believer in the Book of Mormon, and the revelations I have given unto you, saith the Lord your God”, and verse 122 suggests that people could also earn stock by working on the house.

Vinson Knight died in Nauvoo in 1842.⁸

Hyrum Smith was murdered with Joseph in the Carthage Jail in 1844.⁹

Isaac Galland left the Church sometime after 1843, claiming the Church had cheated him out of land in Commerce, Ill and in Iowa. He died in Iowa in 1858.¹⁰

William Marks was the Nauvoo stake president. By 1844, his faith faltered, he became an enemy of the Church, and was associated with the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum. He supported Sidney Rigdon and then James Strang. He joined the Reorganized Church in 1859, and died in 1872.¹¹

Henry G. Sherwood was faithful through all the early trials of the Church. He was in the first pioneer company to reach the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In 1855, some conflict arose between him and Church leaders and he left the Church. He died in San Bernardino, CA 1862.¹²

William Law was a strong supporter of Joseph Smith until 1843, when his loyalty faltered—over polygamy, the King Follett discourse (where Joseph taught that we could become gods), and Joseph’s political activities. Joseph refused to seal William to his wife, Jane, because of William’s alleged adultery. Apparently, there was also some sort of nefarious relationship between Joseph Smith and Jane Law, with each side accusing the other. The Laws were both excommunicated in April 1844. William founded the Nauvoo Expositor, and its first and only issue, which discussed the three issues listed above, was published 7 June 1844. The City Council authorized the destruction of the newspaper, which led to the arrest, imprisonment and martyr of Joseph and Hyrum. William and Jane moved to Hampton. IL, where William practiced medicine for forty years; his wife burned their copy of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants; he died in 1892.¹³

Amos Davies was the postmaster and a merchant in Commerce, Ill when the Saints arrived and renamed the town “Nauvoo”. Amos joined the Church in 1840. He was on trial: the City of Nauvoo vs Amos Davis on 10 March 1842, for indecent and abusive language. He was found guilty and was bound by a $100 bond to “keep the peace six months”. In December 1842, Amos was fined $25 for “selling spirits by the small quantity”. He was in court several other times. When the Saints left Nauvoo, Amos stayed behind and cared for his mercantile business. He traveled to Winter Quarters taking needed supplies to the Saints. He went to the California gold fields in 1850, but returned to Illinois, where he died in 1872.¹⁴

Who among those men actually bought stock in the Nauvoo House, or how many they bought, is unknown. Apparently, no accounting of the stock exists today, if it ever did. Recently, printed, uncirculated $50 and $100 stocks have sold for as much as $3,000.

After Joseph and Hyrum were murdered in June 1844, their bodies were secretly buried in the cellar of the unfinished Nauvoo House to prevent them from being stolen. They were later removed and buried close to the Smith family Homestead, and even later still, relocated to the nearby Smith Family Cemetery.¹⁵

Matthew Godfrey has stated, “On March 25, 1845, the committee appointed by the council reported on its findings regarding the Nauvoo House Association stock, including the total number of certificates that had been issued (2,377), how many of those had been sold (348), how many were missing (272), and how many the trustees still held (1,773).”¹⁶ The math here doesn’t work out. If 2,377 stocks were issued, and the trustees still held 1,773, that leaves 604 stock shares not held by the trustees. Of those, 348 had been sold and 272 were missing, a total of 620 shares of stock; a discrepancy of 16 shares, without a possible accounting for the difference. None-the-less, if we assume that the 348 shares sold were mostly $50 shares, that’s only $17,400 of the roughly $100,000 estimated to construct the building.

Godfrey continued, “Because some certificates were missing, several council members advocated calling in the old stock and issuing new stock to prevent fraud, something that Peter Haws, one of the original trustees of the association, asserted Joseph Smith had told him to do. Joseph had even had new certificates printed for this purpose, Haws continued. Although there was much support among the council for this proposition, Brigham Young declared that he had spoken to Joseph Smith before his death about the issuance of new stock and that Young did not believe that it was necessary to do so “at present.” Instead, he recommended that the committee’s report be printed in the newspapers, including the dates of the missing certificates, thereby decreasing the chances of fraud.”¹⁷

Then Godfrey explained that at the 1845 General Conference of the Church, on April 7, Brigham Young “…raised the subject of the Nauvoo House, asking that all those willing to purchase one share of stock in the house raise their hands. According to the minutes of the meeting, ‘there were so many hands uplifted that they could not possibly be counted.’ Young then asked for a raise of hands of those willing to purchase two shares of stock, and ‘quite a large number of hands were shown.’ When Young asked who was willing to complete the Nauvoo House, ‘every hand was raised in the congregation.’ Young then informed the group that the books of the Nauvoo House Association ‘would be opened in the upper part of the brick store’ on April 14.”¹⁸

Apparently, some stocks were given out in exchange for work on the Nauvoo House, and some had been issued in exchange for land deeds.

Godfrey said that in January 1846, “…when Church leaders were making preparations to depart Nauvoo…Brigham Young declared that he wanted to leave a group of men in Nauvoo to ‘finish the Temple and perhaps the Nauvoo House, for he believes they can both be finish’d as well as not and for his part he is willing to leave all his property to finish these two houses.’ Later in this same meeting, Young stated that the completion of these two buildings would ‘stand as monuments of the industry of this people,’ making it important that they were completed. The council agreed, voting unanimously that both the temple and the Nauvoo House be completed.”¹⁹

I have been unable to find any Nauvoo newspaper article referring to Nauvoo House stocks. Nor have I been able to find any surviving list of the stock holders.

According to the Church website, “After the Prophet Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young urged work to continue. By the Fall of 1845, it became clear that both buildings could not be finished before the Saints would have to leave the city. Efforts were shifted to completion of the temple leaving behind an unfinished, two-story shell of stone and brick with no roof. Beginning in 1867, Emma Hale Smith and her second husband, Lewis Bidamon, took materials from the unfinished building and used them to create a boarding house out of the southwest corner of the Nauvoo House. They called the new building the Riverside Mansion and added a stable to house horses for guests. Emma lived in the Riverside Mansion for the last 8 years of her life before her death in 1879.”²⁰

During the renovations, Bidamon removed the original Book of Mormon manuscript from the cornerstone. The manuscript was severely damaged by water, which had seeped into the stone. Furthermore, several fragmented pieces were given away by the Bidamons.²¹

According to the Joseph Smith Papers website, “When…Franklin D. Richards saw the [Book of Mormon] manuscript decades later, after it had suffered significant water damage, he described it as being ‘upon the foolscap of half a century since, apparently without lines. The paper is yellow with age and from the moisture sweated from its own hiding place. It is brittle to the touch. Many of the leaves crumble like ashes and some of them are broken away. It is necessary to handle them with the utmost care. The writing is faint, and is not legible on many continuous lines, but fragmentary clauses, and even whole verses are occasionally discernible.’”²²

In the 1880s, individual Latter-day Saints began acquiring portions of the damaged manuscript. Some fragments were donated to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whereas others were retained by individuals. Roughly 28 percent of the original Book of Mormon manuscript is extant. “The Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds approximately 90 percent of what survives; the Wilford Wood Museum in Bountiful, Utah, and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City also hold fragments, and some fragments are still in private possession. It is possible that other fragments survive but are not currently known to scholars.”²³

Apparently, only one wing of the Nauvoo House was ever begun, and that part was never finished. The part of the Nauvoo House that became the Riverside Mansion was owned and operated by Community of Christ until 2024, as part of the Joseph Smith Historic Site. On March 5, 2024, the “Nauvoo House”, as well as other historically significant properties and artifacts, including the Kirtland Temple, were sold by the Community of Christ to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.²⁴

Trent Dee Stephens, PhD

trentdeestephens.com

stephenstrent7@gmail.com

References

1. Woodford, Robert J., The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants in three volumes, Brigham Young University, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 1974, vol. 1

2. Black, Susan Easton, Who's Who in the Doctrine & Covenants, Bookcraft, Salt Lake City, UT 1997

3. Godfrey, Matthew C., A Monument of the Saint's Industry: The Nauvoo House and the Council of Fifty, rsc.byu.edu/council-fifty/monument-saints-industry; in The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History, ed. Matthew J. Grow and R. Eric Smith, Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017, pp 131-140; see also: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:362

4. Black, 1997

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/locations/nauvoo-house?lang=eng; see also The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, Improvement Era, November 1899

8. Black, 1997

9. Ibid

10. Ibid

11. Ibid

12. Ibid

13. Ibid

14. Ibid

15. Smith, Joseph, B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church 6:628, 1902