Calvin and Sally Pendleton Home and School

This modest log home represents the growing urban landscape of Nauvoo. Like other young families, the Pendletons found ways to make ends meet while sharing their talents with the community. The school addition on the back of their home serves as a reminder of the Latter-day Saint emphasis on education in Nauvoo, an emphasis that persists in the Church today.

The replica log home, with its lean-to schoolroom added in the back, is characteristic of hundreds of similar log homes that were part of Nauvoo in the 1840s. None of these wooden log homes have survived. The Nauvoo city plat allowed for a schoolhouse to be built in each of the city’s four wards. The schoolhouse in the Fourth Ward was never built. School classes took place elsewhere, including Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store, the Cultural Hall, and later in the Seventies Hall.

Calvin married Sally Ann Seavey in October 1843, and the young newlyweds moved onto this city lot. Over the next three years, while Sally kept house, tended a garden and apple orchard, and saw to the needs of the couple’s first child, Calvin served as clerk of the Nauvoo High Council and worked as a farmer and a tutor for penmanship students. He also learned some blacksmithing from Jonathan Browning, and some evidence suggests he studied medicine before leaving Nauvoo in the Spring of 1846. The Pendleton’s commitment to the gospel while pursuing an education and teaching others is an inspiring example of seeking learning “by study and also by faith.” ( D&C 88:188).

What to Expect

The Pendleton Home and Schoolhouse is a two-room guided tour of the family living area and schoolroom. In the schoolroom, a missionary often gives a demonstration of what children in Nauvoo would have learned in class. After visiting the Pendleton Home and Schoolhouse, you are free to explore the rest of Nauvoo.

360° Walkthrough