Missouri - part 2

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

On Thursday morning (Oct 17) I thought it would be a good use of our time to look for the properties where our ancestors lived. It was off season so none of the sites opened until 10:00.

I figured that I would have a ton of ancestors who had lived in Nauvoo but I was wrong. I did find twenty people but they were all from two families, the Leavitts and the Davenports (Thomas Rowells second wife). There was no information on where the Davenports lived but the Leavitts lived in two areas. They had a farm outside of Nauvoo and thy rented a place in town.

The visitors center gave us a map that showed where the farmland was but it showed no roads. To find the property I started at the mississippi river and clocked eight miles east down Young street. Eight miles took us onto a gravel road and then we were supposed to go north for a mile. The problem was, that where we were to go north, there was no road. There was a bit of a trail and we were in a rental so off we went.

The trail eventually turned into a gravel road and then into a paved road and then after one mile it joined a main road. After a mile we were looking at a bunch of fields and we would have had no clue exactly where the Leavitt farm was, but Brandon had menioned a book he bought for Ally called “Glorious Truths About Women of the Restoratoin”. In this book they use several quotes from “Sarah Leavitt Autobiographical Sketch.” As it turns out, I have read this autobiographical sketch but I totally missed this paragraph.

“We swapped farms with a man, got one by the big mound, seven miles from the city, it was a fine pleasant place.”

Remembering “the big mound” we looked around and there was a big mound right in front of us. As I remember, the Leavitts never did get a house build on it. They had a bunch of bricks stored on the property but before they could make it into a house, the Saints were driven out of Nauvoo.

At some point, someone built a house because right on top of the “big mound” is a nice house. It doesn’t look like much of a mound in these pictures but it is very obvious in real life. Just so no one else has to go through what I did, here are the coordinates for the “big mound”.

40.568684, -91.266141

The trip back into Nauvoo was much less exciting than our trip out of town had been. We then looked for Frederick Keslers addresses in town. We found the addresses but none of the houses remain. One was an empty lot and the other was a new modern house. We then looked for the address of where the Leavitts rented a place. The entire neighborhood was gone. The house would have been a block or two from here.

Next on the agenda was what they call the “Temple City” tour. Basically you visit the house of an architect, a Bishop and a farmer. The architect was the home of William & Caroline Weeks. That is a cool story, you should read about it here. The Bishop was at the Edward and Ann Hunter home. The farmer was William and Esther Gheen. The tour talks about how each of these people contributed to the building of the Nauvoo temple. Along the tour was a stone carver. They had a pavillion along the path that talked all about the shaping of the stones.

From here we headed to Parley street to check out the Sarah Leavitt quote. As we were driving we got a call from the Littles offering to take us for lunch.

James Little was our temple president as we served in the temple before it shut down for renovations. They decided to serve a temple mission in Nauvoo. Their mission was scheduled to end the week after we were there so we were excited to see them. We briefly saw them in the temple on Wednesday night but we were glad to go do lunch with them and while we were pressed for time, we do need to eat. While we knew we would see the Littles, I still include them in our list of random meetings of people with connections to us.

After lunch we headed back to Parley street and the trail of hope. The trail of hope has been known as “The Trail of Tears” for most of the history of Nauvoo because this is the road taken by the saints as they were driven out of Nauvoo in February by mobs. The road leads right to the banks of the Mississippi where they crossed the frozen river. Our kids refer to it as the trail of sweat because when were there last time it was 90° with 90% humidity. It was a perfect day this time.

We then checked out the little gazebo with the names of all the people who died on the trail between Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Valley. I saw Jeremiah Leavitt but Lisa was quite dissappointed because one of her ancestors is not listed.

We then spent the rest of the day at the Family Search Center until it was time for our sealing appointment in the temple. After the tempe we were treated to this beautiful sunset and then we headed back to St Louis. For the first twenty minutes we drove along the mississippi river. It was quite beautiful.

--------------------trivia--------------------

A typical fair weather cumulous cloud weighs about 1.4 billion pounds.

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