Day 17 - "In this very room..." and "Thomas Morley... He was somebody..."

August 6th, Kirtland, Ohio

Today, we visited two of our favorite church history sites... we began our day at the John Johnson Home in Hiram. It has been nine years since we were her last and the restoration that was in process then made the experience completely different today.

This is the bed where Emma and Joseph were sleeping with the twins the night Joseph was torn from his bed by a mob and tarred and feathered and beaten severely. The trauma and exposure of the night caused one of the twins to die a few days later. Joseph, stood and preached a sermon on the front porch the following day inspite of the mobs effort to silence him.

"In this very room...", Joseph received many revelations... one of the most important was D&C 76

The porch where Joseph preached to 150 -200 people each Sunday...

Deb took this photo of the fence out front of the home...

Next, we went into Kirtland and visited the grounds of the Kirtland Temple... we did not go inside because the Christ Community Church charges $4.00 a person to go in... we have both seen it and I just had a problem with the idea of a fee to tour the Temple!

Of course our trip would not be complete if we did not walk through another cemetery...

This one has some pretty old and famous burial sites...

Quote of the day - While we were walking through the cemetery, Deb spotted a headstone and said, "Thomas Morley... He was somebody..."

Uh, yeah... I laughed pretty hard at that one!

John Johnson was a very gracious man and helped Emma and Joseph very much when they were in Kirtland...

Next, we went to our visitor center...

In 2004, President Hinckley dedicated the restoration of this entire area... the highway was moved so that the area could be restored to the early Kirtland era... it is really nice now. This is one of the two original buildings on the site (The others are replicas).

This is the other original home... the Whitney home where Joseph and Emma lived until they were able to build their own home...

Inside the store

This is the stockroom where a 16 year old Orson Hyde lived when he took a job in the store in order to be closer to the Prophet Joseph and his teaching.

This is the saw mill...

and the ashery where they produced potash and lye to be sold for a very nice profit...

Finally, we visited the quarry where the sandstone was taken from that was used to build the Kirtland Temple. It was a beautiful place and it was very interesting and inspiring to see the markings left from the very hard manual labor that was necessary to quarry the stones. The temple was built at a great sacrifice and it had to be a bitter pill to swallow when they were forced to leave Kirtland!