Red Brick Store, Smith Family Cemetery & Hotchkiss Street-Nauvoo, IL

Our next stop was Nauvoo, Illinois. It is a beautiful city next to the Mississippi River that was renamed "Nauvoo" by the Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in April 1840.

Knowing that we still needed to make it to Minnesota later that night we only had time to do a few things in Nauvoo. We checked out the site along the Mississippi River where the Mormon Exodus took place. It was quite humbling to know from February until September 1846 about 7,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints fled the religious intolerance they experienced in Illinois. They used barges like this to carry their wagons across the mighty Mississippi River. 

This statue depicting Joseph Smith and Brigham Young looking out over the Mississippi River and into the friendlier state of Iowa is located at the site where many of the Saints crossed the river.

The Mississippi River is really quite remarkable.

It was so cool being able to see the Nauvoo Temple is the distance.

Our next stop was the Red Brick Store where the Relief Society, one of the oldest and largest women's organizations in the world, was organized in the second-story meeting room on March 17, 1842. 

This is the original store display and a few artifacts that were used when Joseph and Emma Smith ran this store.

Then we went over to the Smith Family Cemetery to pay our respects. 

Something we really wanted to do was to find Hotchkiss St. before we left Nauvoo, IL. Hotchkiss Street was named after Horace Rowe Hotchkiss who was born April 15, 1799 in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1837 two Connecticut speculators, Horace Hotchkiss and John Gillet, bought land in what would become Nauvoo. In 1839 Joseph Smith purchased quite a bit of land along the Mississippi River which included 500 acres from the two speculators. Horace Rowe Hotchkiss is very distantly related to our family. He would be my husband's 2nd cousin 6x removed. They are both related to Samuel Hotchkiss who was born March 6, 1683 in New Haven, CT. Samuel is my husband's 7th Great Grandfather and Horace's Great Grandfather.

Here are letters exchanged between Joseph Smith and Horace Row Hotchkiss that pertain to the "Hotchkiss Land Purchase."