Nauvoo, Carthage and St. Louis

It was inevitable and today was the day we needed to visit a laundromat.  Fortunately, just down the street from our hotel in Keokuk was a very nice and clean landromat.  It doesn't take too long to do laundry when there are several clean and well operating machines available.  All part of the adventure!

We decided to travel back to Nauvoo for an hour or so to see the last few things that we wanted to see before traveling on.  We saw Lucy Mack Smith's home.  This is where she lived after the saints left Nauvoo.  Lucy was 70 years old and stricken with arthritis when the saints left.  Before they left, the leaders of the church purchased her a carriage and a horse to go with the horse she already owned so that she would have a 2 horse carriage.  She was also given this home.  She remained here until her arthritis became too bad and then she moved in with Emma who cared for her until her death at age 80.

We also visited the Pendleton home and schoolhouse.  This was not the original home, as it was made of logs not bricks, but it was rebuilt on the original location.  The Pendleton's came to Nauvoo and he had been trained as a woodworker and a metalworker as well as a doctor.  However, he also put teacher on a form that he filled out at one time, so in the restoration of Nauvoo, a school room was attached to the rebuilt home.  Joseph Smith wanted the community to have small schools that could meet the needs of the individual families so there were many schools in town serving 12-20 students each up to 8th grade.  One of the interesting things is that they were teaching children from many different countries.  They taught English, Reading, Math, Penmanship but not spelling.  Spelling was done phonetically and probably because of the many different languages, there were not normalized spellings for words.  That came later in our education system.

Our last stop in Nauvoo was the blacksmith shop.  This was really fun and they did a lot of explaining about preparing the wagons for departure out of Nauvoo.  The wagons and wheels were all made standard size so that in a company, there would be a few wagons carrying spare wheels and a few carrying spare axels and then when there was a need, they would share.  This is a sample of a wagon loaded for departure.  It would carry about 2000 lbs.  If it was pulled by horses, it would have a place for the driver.  If it was pulled by oxen, the driver would just walk along beside the oxen guiding them with a stick.  The oxen could eat prarie grass and they would walk on forever.  Horses required grain to eat, which had to be carried along with the supplies for the families.  

After we left Nauvoo, Jane (our GPS named after the computer in the Ender's Game series of books) directed us to Carthage through the back windy roads of the farms.  It was beautiful.  The corn is tall and most of it looks really healthy.  We arrived at Carthage just in time for the tour to begin.  We didn't take many pictures inside Carthage Jail.  It was a home as well as a jail.  The jailor was very kind to Joseph Smith and his friends who were there to support him.  At the time of the martydom of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith, there were two others in the jail with them--Willard Richards and John Taylor.  John Taylor was shot in the hip and also in his watch.  Willard Richards was only grazed on the ear.  The original door still stands in the room.  There is a hole in the door by the key and in the middle of the door.  Those are the shots that killed Hyrum.  They were devoted brothers.

As we were listening to the presentation upstairs in the jail, it began to rain very hard.  There was thunder and lightning and it was a pretty impressive squall.   It passed over as we were inside the jail.  We left Carthage and headed out for St. Louis.  On the way to St. Louis, the storm caught up with us again.  I have rarely been in a storm like that before.  With the windshield wipers on full blast, I could barely see the road.  Eileen was taking pictures trying to catch the lightning that was landing in the fields right by us.  It was pretty awe inspiring.  We were certainly glad that no funnel clouds appeared. 

For all you sports fans out there, this is the view out our hotel window.

Apparently it is the Edward Jones Dome where the St. Louis Rams play football.  What we are happy about is that it is walking distance to the St. Louis Arch.  Too bad our window doesn't overlook that!