Tuesday, September 13, 2016 – Clean Parking lot, Edward Hunter home, Edward Hunter Home and “Nauvoo Bricks”, Lyon Drug Herb Garden

This morning’s chores went faster than usual. I had a helper. My father-in-law, Jim Burk came to my rescue. We cleaned the entire visitor’s center parking lot in record time. It helps when there are two blowers going instead of one. Once again we were herding acorns, a very hard thing to get to blow where you want it to go.

Yesterday I mentioned that I saw an archaeology team excavating the foundation of the Edward Hunter home. Today I got a closer look at the dig site. This is only their second day of digging at the site and the team has already uncovered most of the foundation footings. They’ve identified the door locations and the location of the fireplace.

 

The home was originally a “Nauvoo Brick” structure. All of the exterior walls were three bricks thick. The interior walls that separated interior rooms were two bricks thick. It was estimated to contain about forty thousand bricks.

When all of the saints evacuated Nauvoo in the winter and spring of 1846 most of the homes were abandoned without anyone buying them. Local people took advantage of the abandoned structures and began to strip (vandalized) them of anything usable. They took doors, windows, hinges, furniture, shingles, etc; just about anything of value. Finally they would strip every brick from the house. If you can imagine the scene in the late 1840’s and 1850’s, the town of Nauvoo was like a huge “Home Depot.” Anything you needed to build a home was right there for the taking. 

I don’t know if the Edward Hunter home was vandalized and stripped down to the foundation but it may have been. Most homes in old Nauvoo met that fate.

The rest of the afternoon we only visited a couple of historic sites.  We had the most fun in the herb garden of the Lyon Drug site. By chance the FM Horticulturalist, Richard Hancock, happened to be there. He gave us an amazing tour of the grounds and herb garden.  The flowers and herbs were both beautiful and interesting as Richard gave us background information, names and a lot of insight about the plants. Richard knows his stuff. Once we move to Nauvoo and take over the ground keeping job there, Richard will be our boss.

We finished the day performing in “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” and Jim & Betty Burk got to watch us perform our parts. And speaking of our parts, tonight for the first time both Sis. Johnson and I had our assignments changed. We were given new rolls and routines to learn and perform. It was a little nerve wracking and more than a little frightening. But, all went well, we both got everything right and the show went fine.