Sunday, March 19, 2017 – Lyon Drug, Windsor Lyon

Today Sis. Johnson and I were assigned to give tours in the Lyon Drug of Old Nauvoo. This is the drug store of Windsor Lyon. He preferred to use natural and botanical remedies to treat illnesses. Outside on the grounds around the building are herb gardens that Sis. Johnson and I get to take care of as part of our duties as grounds keepers. These gardens are planted with the same kinds of herbs, plants and flowers that Windsor Lyon would have growing around his drug store in the 1840’s.

Windsor Lyon and his wife suffered a lot of heartache in the early days of Nauvoo because they lost three of their children to disease all under the age of three. After the death of their daughter Marian, (March 19, 1842 exactly 175 years ago today) her lifeless body was brought to Joseph Smith the day after her death. It was a Sunday and Joseph was preaching to a large assembly Saints in a grove of trees near the unfinished Nauvoo Temple. Upon seeing the lifeless body of this two-year-old child, Joseph changed his speech and spoke on the salvation of children.

 

Joseph said, “The Lord takes away many, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth: therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning, we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil, and we shall soon have them again.” (See: “The Prophet’s Sermon on Life and Death; the Resurrection and the Salvation of Children,” in Smith, History of the Church, 4:553-57.) Our knowledge of the Plan of Salvation is a real blessing to those of us who have suffered the loss of a loved one.