M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Another Witness of the Light:
The Museum of Church History and Art Showcases
Two Twentieth Century Photographers
by Scot Facer Proctor

Images of Nauvoo

Opening Statement

The Prophet Joseph Smith stood just over six feet tall in stocking feet (though he often wore boots so he appeared six feet two inches tall) and weighed between 212 to 220 pounds. After I had grown to my full stature I discovered that I was the same height and weight as he-a reality that has deeply affected my photography. When I am shooting Church historical photographs, I always keep "Joseph's view" in my mind. Sometimes, as I mentioned in the introduction to Gallery 1, I will crank the tripod and camera to Joseph's exact eye level so I can see and capture things as he did. For some reason this is important to me. I have not been disappointed in the results.

Shooting Nauvoo

I have not kept track of how many images I have taken of Nauvoo over the past thirty years. I love Nauvoo and the spirit which still lingers there. I love the Prophet Joseph. I love to walk where he walked and try to imagine what he felt at any given period of his short life to capture in my images. I have spent untold hours in the Carthage Jail pondering and praying and meditating about Joseph and the Restoration. It was a very emotional day for me to pass Joseph's exact age and to be extended a mortal sojourn beyond his.

Don Oscarson, the writer and producer of "The City of Joseph" pageant, a long-time lover of Nauvoo, Church History, and the Prophet Joseph (and a great personal friend) once told me a story about a moment he had in Nauvoo that I have never forgotten. The story affected me deeply. One wintry evening he and Stan Kimball (another remarkable man and a world class expert on the Mormon Pioneer Trail) were coming out of the visitor's center in Nauvoo. A snow was lightly falling, the lights around the gardens there were almost magical, the night was still and serene. They paused for a moment and gazed upon the incredibly beautiful scene. At once Stan said, "Don, we're in love with a city that never was."

I knew in an instant what he meant and I didn't want that statement to affect my long-years love affair with Nauvoo. All that we see is what we have imagined the City of Joseph was like. It has attained a mythic quality for us. There was something about Nauvoo that has, however, been passed down through the bloodlines. It is something great. It is something of our heritage to have taken a mosquito-infested swamp and turn it into a thriving city on the horseshoe bend of the river. It is something to remember hundreds of converts arriving week after week in certain times-all of them coming there to find and build Zion. It was a place of love and joy. A place of happiness for a season. It was a place of learning and maturing. And yet it was a place of sorrow, the likes of which have probably not been felt any other time in this dispensation when the Saints lost Joseph. I have felt those emotions at times as I have walked the streets of Nauvoo late at night or perhaps at 5:00 o'clock in the morning. There is something that lingers in the air there. I can't explain it, but you can feel it if you want to.

I led a small tour back about four years ago which ended at the Carthage Jail (as all our tours do). As a tradition we have a testimony meeting to conclude the tour-mainly to let people release their emotions of following in Joseph's footsteps for 3,000 miles and two weeks and then coming to this place where he was martyred. Twenty-seven of the twenty-eight tour participants had borne testimonies--two people were left, my twelve-year-old son Thomas, and our Roman Catholic bus driver. Our drivers generally don't join us for the testimony meetings but this one did. He looked around and said, "Well, I guess it's my turn." I was mildly shocked but did not physically show it. I just couldn't wait to hear his feelings. He had been in every site, had joined nearly every lecture, had been reading the Book of Mormon along the way. He continued, "I have learned this one thing from all of this. Perhaps it is or should be the watch cry of the Mormons----Remember Nauvoo." He went on to talk about why and we all cried. He was right. There is something in our blood (whether new convert or old timer) about Nauvoo. We even like to say the name Nauvoo. We love that part of our heritage. We dream about it. We talk about it in classes and read about it in books. Nauvoo. Nauvoo. We say it loud and we say it clear. Camelot! It is that indeed. And those who were forced from their homes and from their secure lives in that place looked back upon their city fair and imprinted The City of Joseph upon their souls so deeply that perhaps it even re-patterned the DNA to create memory in our souls today.

There are now twenty-nine or thirty restored sites in Nauvoo-most of them lovely brick structures; not much of a representation of what Nauvoo was really like. There were only about 300 brick structures in olden time, the rest were frame homes or more common the crude log cabins. It was a city that rose from the swamp, was inhabited by as many as twenty-thousand people, then was abandoned all in a matter of seven years.

Final Thoughts

Maurine and I were in Utah for a visit a couple of weeks ago. We actually were able to visit the Museum of Church and History and Art across from the Tabernacle and see the display for the first time which we have been publishing online for the last two months. The display was very moving. It made us want to hang all those images in our home. It humbles me to think I have been able to record these sacred places on film. It is privilege beyond words. I suspect when I finally pass on, God willing, I will have a panorama of photographs spanning seventy years.

George Edward and I have captured different parts of Nauvoo. I'm grateful for George Edward's images-they show us some things that don't exist now. He arrived there just sixty-one years after the Saints left-it seems like there could have still been fires smoldering from the early times. I will try to point out some interesting things in the captions below and I hope that you will enjoy them.

Captions:

The foundation in the foreground is a great depiction of how much of Nauvoo looked when the restoration process began in the 1960's. Nauvoo is a place of building-not just in early times but in modern times as well. By Scot Facer Proctor, 1990.

It looks like there are a great number of cut stones left over from the original building of the Nauvoo Temple but actually Kieth Merrill had been here just some weeks before filming Legacy and this "fake" blocks were still in place so I used them as props for the still photograph as he did for the motion picture. There is a feeling of great sacrifice in this quarry. A hundred men at a time used to work in here to break, cut, shape and gather the stone from here to take to the temple site about a half a mile from here.

A view from the pulpit inside the Seventies Hall in Nauvoo. We always like to bring our groups in here and just sing with our whole souls-hymns like: High on a Mountain Top, A Banner is Unfurled," and "Now Let Us Rejoice." Here is where some of the early, organized missionary work began-kind of like a very abbreviated and small Missionary Training Center. By Scot Facer Proctor, 1990.

This is my favorite portion of the original 'martyrdom trail' from Nauvoo to Carthage. The dirt and gravel roads that most closely approximate the original 26 miles to Carthage are carefully marked with directions so that a brave, modern driver can actually follow the trek clear to the Carthage Jail. It is a very moving experience to do this in modern times. By Scot Facer Proctor, 1990.

I took this photo the day after a tornado had blown Nauvoo to pieces in 1990. There were large trees downed everywhere and debris spread in every direction. This angle was one of the few I could use to block out all the mess. Don't be deceived by the substantial nature of this lovely brick structure and assume, "Wow, Heber C. Kimball really had it great there in Nauvoo.. Before Heber and Vilate Kimball moved into this house they had been living in a wagon box, then a lean-to, then a small log cabin, then a frame house--then this brick structure. They would only stay in this home for five months then they were driven out. By Scot Facer Proctor, 1990.

Parley Street in Nauvoo was truly a 'trail of tears' for the Saints-if you traverse west you come to the Mississippi River and the 6,565 foot barrier to cross-you can see the river in the background. If you follow Parley Street to the east it will lead one to the Carthage Jail. Either way there was sorrow, pain, and suffering. Modern tourists can walk from the Seventy's Hall to the shores of the Mississippi River passing numerous signs on the way to the river, which take words from the journals and writings of the early Saints-capturing. It is a very moving experience. By Scot Facer Proctor, 1994.

A gathering of people outside the Joseph Smith Mansion House in Nauvoo. Joseph and Emma had lived in no less than sixteen different homes in 17 years of marriage, most of them as guests of other families. Finally Emma had her own home-with 22 rooms-who would n't have called it a "mansion?" Joseph would only live here 10 months and then be killed. By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

I love this picture. It is so rich with detail from a different era. This is actually taken from atop an old building on Muhlholland Street (which still stands to this day) located just across from and to the east of the temple lot. Just beyond the horses and carriages on the right is the actual Temple lot where the new Nauvoo Temple is being built today. It is covered with houses and outbuildings. Not far out of the picture is the home of Joseph Agnew who was the arson who, with two accomplices, burned the temple in 1848. By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

Perhaps George Edward had access to the old 1846 Daguerreotype of Nauvoo taken from this same angle and it influenced him. The David Yearsley home can be seen in the middle of the picture (used as a missionary residence today). Characteristic of George Edward he has placed people in the picture for scale and interest. If the temple would have been standing in 1907 one could have seen it to the right of the large steeple on the hill about the exact middle of the picture. By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

The most interesting thing to me about this shot of "the Pitt Home" in Nauvoo is how many structures are still standing down below on the flats by the Mississippi River in the distance. This home stood up on the hill in the area of the vineyards. The Nauvoo House can be seen down on the shore of the Mississippi almost straight up from the prominent fence post behind the man and a little to the left. This is truly a fascinating view. By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

This is a wonderful picture of the Carthage Jail by George Edward. The second floor window just to the left of the large tree about the middle of the picture (a little obscured) marks the room where Joseph and Hyrum and Willard Richards and John Taylor were located when the deadly shots were fired. Joseph leaped from that window crying out, "Oh Lord, my God." By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

This area was called Potter Slough and was near the place of the miracle of the quail given to the early pioneers and poor among the Saints. The Mississippi River was a constant presence in the lives of the Saints in Nauvoo. By George Edward Anderson, 1907.

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