Days 4 & 5: Nauvoo and Carthage

We pulled into Nauvoo just before all of the historic sites closed for the day.  After cleaning Bryn up from her latest bout with carsickness, we drove around to see the different lots where our ancestors had owned.  

We took pictures of us holding a paper with their names printed on it at each and every lot that they owned back in the 1830's and 1840's.  I think my girls quickly got annoyed, but locating each piece of land is what I was looking forward to most about this trip.

After driving around a bit, we settled in for the night at our cabin.  We all loved it.  It was perfect!

The next morning, we first visited the sites owned by the Community of Christ church.  Here, the girls stand at the back entrance of the Joseph Smith homestead.

This is inside the kitchen of Joseph Smith's Mansion House.  The chairs are original.  We also were able to look into an original mirror that had been owned by Joseph & Emma Smith.

We also visited the Smith Family Cemetery next to the old homestead.

We weren't able to hit up too many of the different houses and buildings because of shorter hours for the season and because of our limited time, but here, Randy stands in front of the first semi-automatic (I think that's what it is) gun that was invented by Mr. Browning.  The Browning gun shop and home were neat to tour.

Bryn had a rough day without getting a nap.  We hadn't planned on taking a wagon ride, but Jenna wanted to, and they had just enough tickets left for us to go.  Bryn promptly fell asleep, so the hour-long ride was most definitely worth it.

Going, going...

Gone.

That afternoon, Randy took a 20-mile bike ride down the Mississippi River Road.  Beautiful scenery!

In the evening, we attended "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo", a play put on by the missionaries that serve in Nauvoo.  We all really enjoyed it.

These ladies were some of the main characters.  We were lucky that it wasn't very busy that night and the girls were able to get a little extra attention from the cast afterward.

 On our way back to the cabin that night, we stopped for a picture in front of the beautifully lit temple.

Before we went to Nauvoo, I had emailed a lengthy list of our ancestors who had lived there to the missionaries working in the Land and Records Office.  They kindly looked up and located the land each of them had owned and then colored it on a map for me.  My sister, Dixie, happened to be in Nauvoo about a week before us, so she took pictures of the maps they had ready for me, and I was able to do a bit of work on locating the lots on their present day streets before we arrived.

The missionaries also put together a CD with all sorts of information on each of our ancestors who had lived there.  As I looked over a few of the hundreds of pages on the CD, I discovered that the bricks from one of Randy's ancestor's homes had been reused to build the First Presbyterian Church in Nauvoo.

This pas a parting shot of Nauvoo as we left toward Carthage.  :)

On Saturday, we woke up to a lot of rain and lightning.  We packed up and made our way over to Carthage, IL.  Here, we are in the bedroom where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered.

Interesting tidbit:  While in the Carthage Jail, Joseph Smith was able to have friends freely come and go.  Randy's 3rd great-grandfather, John Solomon Fullmer, had spent the previous night at the jail with them, but was sent on a legal errand on the day that they were killed.  We didn't know any of this until the guide was telling us the story and we recognized his name!

After our time at Carthage, we headed for my parent's house in Joliet/Plainfield.  My mom had dinner ready for us when we got there.  After visiting for a while and getting settled in, we put Bryn to bed and left the older girls with my parents while we went over to my brother's house to play games with he and his wife.  Only 5 days into our trip, and we've already had a fabulous time!