Imagine Nauvoo in 1847. The prophet has been murdered. The Saints have been expelled. The once bustling and beautiful city of thousands of Saints now stands “desolate” and “deserted.” After the Battle of Nauvoo, three cannons sit abandoned at the entryway to the temple. Their barrels bear down upon the barren City of the Saints,…
Read moreBurgers and Inspiration: The Story Behind Nauvoo’s Red Front Restaurant
This story starts with a burger. Just as Jordan Squire took his first juicy bite, his wife Morgan dropped the bomb. We need to sell our house, move to Nauvoo, and open a restaurant, she told him. An Unexpected Path Keep in mind, the Squires were not in the restaurant industry. He was a computer…
Read moreExtraordinary Women in the Temple
180 years ago today a group of twenty women gathered with the Prophet Joseph Smith in the upper room of the Red Brick Store in Nauvoo, Illinois.1 Three of them would later become Presidents of the Relief Society.2 “I now turn the key to you in the name of God,” the Prophet said.3 “We are…
Read moreMarvelous Light
Last weekend my family participated in what’s called the Nauvoo Exodus Commemoration. Hundreds of people met on this freezing Saturday morning to remember something remarkable—beginning in February 1846 thousands of Latter-day Saints began their journey west in search of religious freedom. At the event we all wore name tags honoring our ancestors whose footsteps led…
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