The events of this night took us by surprise. We got in our car to drive to the Cultural
Hall for our Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo show,
and found that Ray did not have the keys to the car with him – he had left them
on the dresser when he changed his pants, and I didn’t have my purse with my
keys. Of course we had pulled the locked house door shut behind us, so we walked
the couple of miles to White and Main Streets.
It took us a half hour, arriving only 15 minutes late for the warm up,
and 15 minutes before show time. One of
our songs begins with, “Come Walk the Streets of Old Nauvoo, meet me at Kimball
and Main.” Well, we did that tonight,
but Kimball is three blocks further down the road. Thank goodness it wasn’t raining! We had a doozy of a storm the other night,
with continuous lightning and thunder for a couple of hours or so. Thursday and Friday may be just the
same. One of the Elders in our cast is a
Facilities Manager Missionary and he had a master key to our house so he and
his wife brought us home and let us in – we are so blessed.
On our way home we stopped at the home of one of the
Elders that came out with us, and Elder Ray and another Elder gave him a blessing
– his hip is giving him pain again and he does not want to leave his mission early!
We are beginning to decide which sites we most like
to be at. For me it really is hard to
choose. Learning about and telling our
visitors about those long ago folks is very inspiring. Like most pioneers, they were very creative,
and willing and able to work with what they had.
Ray has three he really likes, and I will tell you about the Browning Home and Gun Shop – he loves Jonathan Browning’s story. Jonathan was born in Brushy Fork, Tennessee in 1805 and was an apprentice blacksmith by age 14 and making “fine looking rifles” by age 19. A few years later he opened and operated a successful gun shop in his home town of Brushy Fork. Jonathan married Elizabeth Stalcup (that name familiar to you Don G?) and they had five children before moving to the riverboat town of Quincy, Illinois, about 40 miles downriver from Nauvoo. There he heard about Joseph Smith and came up the river by steamboat to meet him.
He
became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and “by
December of 1842 he had moved his family to beautiful Nauvoo” and established a
gun shop here. He is known to have been
a friend of Abraham Lincoln and he became famous for his guns, especially for his
repeating rifle that he invented and was making as early as 1831. He joined the saints in their westward trek,
and wanted to join the Mormon Battalion but was asked by Brigham Young to stay
in Council Bluffs, Iowa to help the remaining trekkers with supplies,
blacksmithing and guns – he remained there for five years. He eventually moved on to Utah and his son,
John Moses Browning was born there and became just as famous as his father, if
not more so. The Browning Museum in Ogden
honors both father and son, with many of their guns on display.
I really love the Brigham Young Home, and also the
homes of John Taylor and Heber C. Kimball, not just for the homes, but the
stories of the men and their families.
My scripture for the week will tell you why: Malachi
4:5-6.
We don't always wear pioneer cloths! I have short sleeves here.
It is getting warmer - in the 80's today.
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