Celebrating Kirtland
Historic Site Rises Again

An Exclusive Photographic Essay
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor
Essay by Maurine Jensen Proctor
All Photographs Copyright 2003 Scot Facer Proctor
(Use of any photographs herein only by written permission of Meridian Magazine)

click on photos to enlarge

Part 3

The School House

Because this site carries such significance, painstaking attention to accuracy has been the rule for each of the settlement’s restoration and reconstruction efforts. For instance, archeologists and volunteers worked side by side in humid heat removing layers of dirt at the excavation site they assumed to be the site of the school house. They thought they had hit pay dirt when their trowels hit a stone foundation of a schoolhouse that had lain hidden under five feet of dirt for 80 to 100 years.

But after dating its wood through the technology of dendrochronology, it was determined that this schoolhouse wasn’t built until the 1850’s.

Restored schoolhouse in Kirtland will become a popular place for families, groups and children to get a sense of the Kirtland period.

Although disappointed, the historians were not derailed from their search, continuing their research until they found an 1837 property deed and survey referencing the southeast corner of the schoolhouse, allowing them to locate the foundation for which they searched. On that original 1819 foundation, the schoolhouse was reconstructed.

Lovely interior of the restored Kirtland schoolhouse is reminiscent of the 1830’s.

In the fall of 1830, the Latter-day Saints, who until this time had worshiped together in homes, began holding meetings there. Helen Mar Whitney recalled early Sunday School gatherings in the building: “Among other pleasing recollections were our Sunday Schools, where I used to love to go and recite verses and whole chapters from the New Testament.”

The Sawmill

Beautiful trail leads to the restored water-powered sawmill is one of the most fascinating buildings in the old Kirtland village.

Because it was expensive to ship lumber or float it down a river, every thriving 19th century community had a sawmill, and Kirtland was no different. In 1830, the United States had 31,000 working sawmills and Kirtland had three.

Log ready to be cut into planks or boards at the water-powered sawmill.

“We found the sawmill by accident,” says anthropologist Mark Staker. “We were looking for the ashery.” When Staker and a colleague dug some test trenches, they found a building foundation and excavated the site. “It took us almost two weeks to figure out it wasn’t the ashery,” he said. “It was the sawmill next door.”

View of the water-powered saw.

Kirtland buildings that had survived in some form to the present day, like the Newel K. Whitney Store, were carefully studied and analyzed by experts down to the chemical composition of the paint on the walls in order to learn as much as possible about the original structure. But with buildings that no longer existed, the ashery and sawmill for instance, careful archeology and analysis of early photographs of similar buildings helped provide significant details about the original structures. Where no record existed for a particular aspect of the building, information was filled in from what was known about a similar building from the time period.

Water-powered saw at work cutting a large log into planks.

The central feature of the sawmill is the “fully automated” up-and-down saw. The circular saw was not yet in use by the Kirtland period. Automated by water power, the saw could make 80 or 90 strokes a minute, cutting about 45 inches of the log into planks.

The sawmill also features lathes and other smaller essential tools of the period in order to create some of the finer workmanship still on display at the Kirtland Temple.

The Ashery

South face of the newly reconstructed Ashery, the only one of its kind in America.

During the Kirtland period, the Church purchased certain properties in order to meet growing Church needs, and in some instances, Church members consecrated properties they owned for the work of the faith. Newel K. Whitney’s store and nearby ashery were two of these consecrated properties.

View of the reconstructed Ashery, the only one of its kind in the United States

An ashery was a highly lucrative business in frontier America, and the proceeds from this business were used both for the printing of the Book of Mormon and Book of Commandments as well as the construction of the temple. Ashes which could be purchased for 23 cents a bushel could be sold as potash for $100 or more.

Small wagon in the Ashery.

What is an ashery? “An ashery is just as it sounds,” says Steven Olsen. “It’s a place where hardwood ashes were created, collected and processed.”

Interior of the Ashery is both fascinating and unique.

The processing began with and relied upon a good supply of hardwood trees with a composition high in natural salts. Once trees were burned to ash, large hoppers of raw ash would be leached with water, the run-off emerging as a caustic lye that would then be boiled down into potash.

Lovely interior of the Ashery.

This final product could then be sold as an essential ingredient to be used in the manufacture of alum, saltpeter, glass, soap, leather goods, gunpowder and paper, and in cotton and wool processing.

Click here to go to Part 4 of Celebrating Kirtland--Historic Site Rises Again--A Photo Essay

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