Joseph and Emma Smith in Nauvoo

Nauvoo represents the culmination of Joseph Smith’s prophetic ministry on the earth. In just five years, Joseph taught profound truths about the nature of God, the destiny of the Church, and the promise of eternal families. He introduced temple ordinances and organized temple work on behalf of deceased ancestors. He exercised priesthood keys in establishing the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo. And he ensured that the keys of leadership would continue with prophets and apostles even after his death. Throughout their years together in Nauvoo, his wife, Emma, served as Joseph’s companion in leading and teaching others, including their children at home.

Since the 1840s, the Smith family, and later the Community of Christ, have preserved the memory of Joseph and Emma Smith by rebuilding Joseph’s red brick store and caring for the family homestead, the Mansion House, the Nauvoo House, and the family cemetery. Their careful and devoted stewardship over many years is part of the legacy of these sacred places.

Joseph and Emma Smith and their four young children moved to a small, two-story log home on a bend of the Mississippi in May 1839. Their arrival marked the end of a season of upheaval for their family. Emma and the children had fled their home in Far West, Missouri, earlier that winter. Then in April, Joseph and his fellow prisoners from Liberty, Missouri, escaped from their guards and crossed the river into Illinois. After living for weeks as refugees without a home of their own, the family must have looked forward to this move. Over the next five years, the family experienced sickness, loss of loved ones, legal action, and financial struggles. Yet, with faith in Jesus Christ and help from other Latter-day Saints, the prophet and his family enjoyed a measure of peace and prosperity. They added to their log home and built a store and a hotel nearby. These buildings became places of revelation and instruction.

In January 1841, the Lord commanded the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo to build a house of the Lord—the Nauvoo Temple. He also commanded them to build “a house for boarding,” where strangers would come and find “health and safety” and a chance to “contemplate the word of the Lord, and the cornerstone I have appointed for Zion.”i That boarding house was named the Nauvoo House, and like the temple, it was also to have the Lord’s name upon it. It was a major undertaking, and in the end, the Latter-day Saints were not able to finish the project before most of them left Illinois. Beginning in the 1860s, Lewis Bidamon reused stone and brick from the Nauvoo House to provide a partial fulfillment of the Lord’s words by opening the Riverside Mansion and Bidamon stables.

Just months after laying the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, Joseph Smith opened a large, two-story store made of red brick. Upstairs over the store was Joseph Smith’s personal office and a large gathering room. In that upstairs office, Joseph wrote a news article in answer to John Wentworth, a Chicago newspaper editor. That writing includes the 13 Articles of Faith and a powerful statement of the destiny of the Church now known as The Standard of Truth.

On March 17, 1842, Joseph Smith joined his wife, Emma, and a group of about 20 other men and women in the room above his store. This meeting organized the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, with Emma Smith as president. The store provided a place for several more meetings of the Relief Society over the next two years.

While they waited for the Nauvoo House to be completed, Joseph Smith decided to build a smaller hotel across the street. With an abundance of lumber coming down the river, the work proceeded quickly. The Smith family moved into the new building in August 1843. Weeks later, the Mansion House Hotel opened for business.

The years of 1842 and 1843 were a time of learning more about the endowment and sealing ordinances now performed in temples around the world. Joseph and Emma Smith were sealed together in the upper room of the store in May 1843. By September, Emma had also received the endowment. She taught other women how to administer that ordinance once the Nauvoo Temple was completed. As Church leaders gathered to the Mansion House, the home became a place of prayerful instruction and inspiration.

With the death of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at Carthage, the Mansion House took on another role. Here the bodies of the two brothers lay in state, and some 10,000 came to pay their respects before the burial. Today the remains of Emma, Joseph, and other family members lie in the Smith Family Cemetery.