A Virtual Tour of the Kirtland Temple

well good evening church history friends my name is barb walden and it is a joy to welcome you to the first night of our summer series this july we will explore a number of community of christ historic sites virtually and we are thrilled that you're joining us for this virtual journey down the restoration trail so now that you're here with us let me tell you what you can expect this evening i'll share briefly some kirtland history to help set the stage for our virtual tour i'll then hand the screen over to lock and he will take us through a virtual tour of the kirtland temple and there'll be times throughout the tour to ask questions and make comments about what you're seeing and about what lock is sharing with us feel free to use the chat feature to share your name where you're joining us from this evening and for your usual witty banter but when it comes to those important church history questions and kirtland temple questions please use the q a feature in sending us your questions tonight for most of you that q a feature will appear at the bottom of your screen we don't want to miss those questions so please send them through that q a feature we hope to wrap up the evening program around 8 pm central tonight making it a full hour of kirtland temple history and it doesn't get any better than that now our summer series is not only exploring the history behind four community of christ historic sites we're also helping to preserve them so any donations received during our summer series will go towards the ongoing maintenance and preservation of the community of christ historic sites uh lock we'll drop the donations link and the mailing address in the chats for anyone wishing to send in a donation thank you all for your consideration and for helping preserve the historic sites so now let's take a look at a little kirtland history to help set the stage for lock's virtual tour of the kirtland temple i'm going to do a quick screen share for the visual learners in the crowd all right i trust you'll let me know if you're not able to see the screen now the first latter-day saint missionary team arrived in kirtland in 1830 as they were on their way from western new york to jackson county missouri and the missionaries went out of their way to see sydney rigdon who was living in mentor ohio which is a town just north of kirtland now sydney was a pretty influential minister in the church of christ the stone campbell movement and he emphasized restoration of the primitive christian church during this time as he was overseeing around 17 congregations in the kirtland region uh carly pratt was one of sydney rigdon's followers you could say that sydney rigdon was a mentor of parley pratt and he was also partly was one of the missionaries arriving in kirtland on his way to jackson county missouri so these missionaries increased awareness of the new latter-day saint church in kirtland and many of the people living in the area including including sydney and phoebe rigdon who you see on the screen were soon converted and this new wave of converts doubled the membership of the church and soon the majority of church members were living in ohio not western new york so keep in mind during this time every member of the church is a convert to the church some of sydney's former followers were not only joining the church they were also taking on significant leadership positions in this brand new church and here's a list of a few of those joining the church in kirtland who were associates of sydney rigman so f g williams frederick ranger williams would become a member of the first presidency along with sydney rigdon edward partridge would serve as bishop in missouri newell k whitney would later serve as bishop in kirtland lyman white and orson hyde would become apostles in this new church and these folks and others gave um an instant credibility to the church and they they created a church base in northeast ohio and this was a significant reason that the church headquarters shifted from new york to kirtland in 1831. there was a lot of things happening in kirtland in the 1830s and i'm gonna try to to give you a little bit of that in this brief overview so when cindy rigdon joins the church he also brought an emphasis on living out the book of acts chapter two and restoring a community and that be a community based on this concept of living all things in common more specifically sydney becomes an influential spokesman for building shared community in kirtland he said our pretensions to follow the apostles and all their new testament teachings required a community of goods that as they established their order in the model church of jerusalem we were bound to imitate their example this resonated for early church leaders and members and so this action plan if you will based on acts chapter 2 eventually led to the construction of the kirtland temple the first latter-day saint temple and this was an incredible achievement for a community of mostly impoverished individuals so as missionaries traveled they would encourage converts to relocate to kirtland and so as people were moving to kirtland you found multiple families living under one roof multiple families under one roof was pretty common in kirtland but they were not living in the the best of mansions or highfalutin homes by any means truman co described the homes of some church members in kirtland as quote a grotesque assemblage of hovels and shanties very few of these cabins were accounted fit for human habitations so the thought that that this group of people living in poverty are sacrificing to construct this remarkable house of worship that you see here on the screen is extraordinary i mean it's remarkable but poverty was a serious concern in kirtland the kirtland bishop newell k whitney who you see here was commissioned to watch over the poor to administer to their wants by humbling the rich and proud that was literally his assignment to go and humble the rich and proud and one solution to feeding the poor was through fast meetings where individual church members would abstain from their meals and they would bring butter and bread and other foods to the bishop's storehouse for distribution to the poor so new okay whitney would be collecting these items with a plan of spreading them out to the poor members of the community they also held feasts for the poor which were these open meals for those who are in need people like widows and orphans and homeless in the community the evangelists would also give blessings during the feast for the florida help meet both the physical and the spiritual needs of the community both were important during this kirtland period and newell and elizabeth k whitney hosted one of these feasts uh for the poor in their home which you can see uh there the yellow house up at the top their feast for the poor was so large that the guests were served in shifts over a three-day period which i think says a lot about how how many poor people that were living in kirtland but also the magnitude of the generosity of newell and elizabeth whitney now education was another serious concern during this time and a two-story schoolhouse and print shop was built directly behind the temple with hopes of meeting the church needs for both a school a gathering place and a printing press and this two-story building was built before the kirtland temple um was was constructed so that that tree area that you see here behind the temple is where that two-story building was once located unfortunately it isn't there any longer but you can see the location of it and the first floor of that building was used as a gathering place where the congregation would gather before the temple was built this was where church members church ministers excuse me were schooled and where the lectures of faith were given it's also where the first apostles meaning the council of 12 were ordained in 1835 while up on the second floor of that building oliver calgary and fg williams had a hopping printing press that was turning out a number of first edition books the first doctrine and covenants in 1835 was printed the second edition of the book of mormon came out of this print shop and emma's first church hymnal was printed there in 1835 it came hot off the presses just in time for the dedication of the kirtland temple a number of newspapers like the messenger and advocate northern times and and others were printed at this print shop as well in kirtland we also see a rapidly evolving priesthood with new offices and leadership roles being established and here is a great graphic from john hamer that shows this rapid growth of leadership positions or or offices in the church from 1830 as you see it appears in blue on the screen uh to to my left that's what the priesthood looked like in the 1830s and then in green you could see what the church leadership and priesthood looked like by 1835. mind you that appears in green we also see an incredible amount of revelations happening during this period something like over 60 sections of the doctrine and covenants were based in kirtland but i wouldn't be surprised if it was more um i've often heard folks say that when visiting kirtland it's like walking through the doctrine and covenants it was a lot happening in kirtland during the time the temple was being constructed and used kirtland is often looked at as a glorious time a pentecostal season for early church members but it was also a very difficult time this rapidly evolving theology in priesthood offices created tensions among the more conservative members within the church then you had economic and political struggles creating more attention not only within the church but with the larger community so opening the kirtland safety society bank began with the best of intentions for alleviating poverty within the community but a bank without a charter garnered very little confidence from the public and the failure of the bank brought on lawsuits and the internal dissensions caused by the bank troubles led many of the church members to pack up and head for missouri in 1838 over 500 people left in one day with what was called the kirtland camp and by 1839 the following year there were only around 100 church members remaining in kirtland left in kirtland so in the years that followed the few church members that remained in kirtland did what they could to maintain and care for the temple they rented it out for a short period to the western reserve teachers seminary and various latter-day saint groups and leaders like william mcclellan and james strang zaddick brooks and william smith would return to kirtland and hold conferences in the lower court of the temple martin harris served as a tour guide and a caretaker for a number of years before moving to utah so by the 1870s we begin to see a fairly steady congregation worshiping in the kirtland temple and by the 1880s kirtland becomes a significant gathering place for members of the reorganization or community of christ so massive efforts were going into maintaining and restoring and preserving the kirtland temple during the early 80s and that led for for decades much of this effort in the beginning was headed up by the brothers william and edmund kelly or e.l kelly but i'd like to think that e.l kelly's wife cassie or catherine did most of the work and you can see her standing looking at her husband sitting there zl kelly the kirtland temple was host for the 1883 and 1887 general conferences and it was a very exciting time for the reorganization kirtland was a significant gathering place so in the decades that followed the kirtland temple congregation continued to grow in numbers as they worshipped in the temple regularly throughout the week they held classes and weddings and priesthood meetings a number of activities inside the historic house of worship the temple grounds were used for annual reunions or church camps beginning around 1911 and continuing until the late 1950s so it's easy to think that that kirtland temple history ended in 1839 when the majority of church members departed from missouri but you'll find there is a lot of fascinating stories and really remarkable people embedded within the temple's history after the 1830s period as well some of my favorite kirtland temple stories comes from the post-1830s period and we have a number of books we'll recommend for you after lachlan's virtual tour if you're interested in learning a lot more about kirtland history so that's a little kirtland history to help lead into the big event tonight which is the virtual tour of the kirtland temple and i am so excited that our virtual tour guide tonight is lachlan makai allah was the first paid full-time site director at the kirtland temple he began in 1993 and served as site director in kirtland until 2002. you can see here the cover of the herald um a young lachlan mackay when he first began as the site director locke left his position in kirtland when he began a much bigger role as director of community of christ historic sites in 2002. it's hard to believe that was 20 years ago so i'm going to hand things over to lock as he's going to take it from here to share the virtual tour of the kirtland temple all right i want to start by talking just a little bit about temple construction i'll use this beautiful photo by jim dodie to illustrate so the temple was built of course between 1833 and 1836 they had hoped to build of bricks but many of the bricks apparently crumble as they fire them they're in a bit of trouble but artemis millet a new member had come down from upper canada the kingston or logaro area in upper canada and he brought with him it seems a building technique new to the kirtland area the idea was to gather pieces of sandstone of various sizes and shapes then using mortar to hold that stone together they build a wall about two feet thick and about 45 feet high you see the exposed rubble wall in this image this is during restoration work so the stucco has been removed you see piles of it down at the bottom of this photo so the stucco original stucco removed this is before the new stucco goes back on but here's what it looked like um there'd been a fair number of patches by this time but so the stucco was described originally as blue which i think was a slate gray the they had painted lines on the stucco trying to make it look like it was built of large dressed or cut stone block which would be the most magnificent building you could put up at the time if you could afford it and of course they couldn't so they're using stucco and paint to replicate the cut stone block look they had sent young people out to gather old crockery and glass that's crushed even finer and dumped into the stucco so that when the sun hit it it would sparkle brilliantly the roof of the temple wood shingles dipped in a red lead paint to preserve them so blue gray walls a reddish brown roof and the doors um moderate olive green like that one it's a pretty colorful temple early on unfortunately tone down through the years but structurally the building really survived amazingly intact they hope to build two more of these buildings just to the south of the temple those instructions part of the doctrine and covenants community christ section 91 to the church of jesus christ that section 94 talks about how on the first lot to the south of the temple they hope to build a house for the presidency so in effect an office building and on the second lot to the house to the south of the temple a house for their printing operations a print shop so try and imagine not one of these buildings but the plan was three and this whole area from what is now maple street just north of the temple to what is still joseph street a block to the south was going to be their public square with their community centered around that public square i'm going to stop screen share for a minute and then start a new one so that we can begin to tour we're going to start by going into the outer court so when you walk through one of two front doors this is what you're going to see i sometimes get asked why two doors and not one well my question is why not three that was more common often there was a men's a women's and a ministers but because latter-day saints have a lay ministry i think that's why no separate minister dorr they did i think kind of have a men's and a women's at least on some occasions they're segregating with men on one half of the congregation and women on the other the doors this is a preaching church layout so the exterior doors go into interior aisles there are two aisles which allows more seating closer to the pulpit so it's it's for listening to preaching versus a processional church layout where you have one central isle the kind of church people sometimes want to be married in one central aisle to proceed down that's not what happens in kirtland the spoken word was most important in this tradition as we go through the temple you're going to see some beautiful decorative woodwork depending on the age of the craftsmen though they had very different styles early on a man by the name of jacob bump was in charge he had apprenticed using the 1806 edition of asher benjamin's architectural pattern books it's like this old house on pbs but in the book form it was very labor intensive in style featured a lot of this kind of work this is called fluting grooves cut into a plank to form a pattern we're going to see more of that labor intensive style in the lower court or first floor of the temple bump got mad and left the community for a time truman angel comes in to help finish up he's younger learning later he apprenticed using the 1830 edition of the pattern book it's simpler and quicker features more of this kind of work this is a greek fret you see running across the top of the door pieces of wood cut out applied to form that geometric pattern we're going to see more of that again on the second floor of the temple i want to pause if anybody wants to drop questions into the q a um either about construction or about the outer court at the moment we have a question from myra elliott and she asks what are the two buildings on the right and left of the kirtland temple drawing and i think this question is related to um back in my presentation i had showed an engraving from henry howe from 1846 and to answer your question myra one of those buildings was uh the methodist meeting house while we think the other one uh could have been the kirtland bank it could have been oliver cadre's law office uh maybe lachlan can tell us for sure after locke's virtual tour i'll go back to that engraving so everyone else can see what it is myra is uh referring to in her question great question myra we also have a question from blake rosberry and he asked the very important question i never asked when i lived nearby why no restrooms why are there no public restrooms in the temple lock is that a question about why now or why in the 1830s oh i hope that's an outhouse question i think it is barb especially um so i do think they would have had a preview somewhere outside and we would desperately love to find it prove these privys of course are gold mines for archaeologists but we have not located the 1830s kirtland privy but a decision was made very early in fact probably 1880s to try and preserve the temple just as it was which means the decision was made very early not to modernize it by gutting spaces to put things like modern bathrooms in and i'd like to think that we were on the cutting edge of the preservation movement and that's why we made such a great decision i really think that's not what is happening i think that we decided we wanted to make it look just as it did to prove that the temple looked just as it originally did and that we were the original church because we owned it so i think it's an identity issue early on um the goal trying to show that because we owned the original temple that looked just as it originally did that proved that we were the original church not anybody else so i'm suspect of our motives but i'm still thrilled with the decision not to gut spaces to modernize and put in things like elevators or pipe organs or bathrooms we have a question from michael wellington and he asks what kind of wood is most of the temple made of much of the temple is walnut and poplar and oak there might also be some beach i think that the the kiln the lumber kiln that church members had caught fire multiple times in one winter and they lost much of the lumber each time so they ended up having to buy from local non-members and i think they're using whatever they can get ryan quick asks is there any reason that the colors have been toned down in renovations over time the exterior is very white not bluish yeah i'm disappointed that the uh the color has been toned down and in fact i made what i thought was a compelling argument that we needed to go back to blue gray walls and a reddish brown roof we did get the green front doors back my argument was we would never dream today of changing their written documents to say what we think they should have said and since their dad they've lost their voice why do we think it's okay to change the artifacts they left behind to reflect what we think is pretty i thought it was a compelling argument but apparently it wasn't because it's still white initially the sun would have just faded the stucco so it wasn't intentional early on it just faded to kind of a slate gray and at some point the sandstone around the windows and the doors because it has a lot of iron in it it rusts and starts developing rust streaks that run down the side of the building that are pretty unattractive so i think a decision was made early that we ought to do something to make it look better and instead of going with like a blue gray paint i'm guessing that by the 1950s there was this idea that the house of the lord should be white signifying purity uh which i think would make a different decision today but that that's i think was probably motivating them when they went with that pristine white for the first time in the 1950s will perez asks how did the community of christ end up owning the temple how was ownership passed down when the saints left kirtland this is a great question and i think locke has got an hour-long class exploring uh ownership of the kirtland temple but locke are you able to give an abbreviated answer to this great question i will and then i'll talk to will tomorrow with an hour-long answer he happens to be a nauvoo so uh the short answer is adverse possession um the ownership of the land that the temple sat on in the 1830s and 40s was very complex there are people at times selling the building before there's any record that they own it at times joseph owns it personally at times he owns it in behalf of the church but prior to his death it was back with joseph in behalf of the church he's killed um there are multiple maneuvers by the various latter-day saint tradition churches to try and strengthen their claim there are sales of the temple some not particularly real more more straw sales um at times it's selling for ten thousand dollars and then being sold for just a few dollars by that same person a few years later um eventually though uh community priced members russell huntley and joseph smith iii get possession um it's a a sale in that is authorized by the state legislature in ohio and in russell huntley had revived i'm sorry um grandis the newell had revived some litigation and managed to get the ohio state legislature to pass legislation specifically so that joseph smith's properties could be sold to settle some of the suits coming out of the kirtland bank failure so the temple is sold on the courthouse steps the guy that buys it gets apparently 13 acres free and clear that sells just the temple then for 150.00 to russell huntley huntley later affiliates with the reorganization sells it to joseph smith iii and mark forskot for 150. um they hope to sell it to the city of kirkland for a town hall but realize that their claim might be problematic so they decided instead to to put together a lawsuit now the real motivation wasn't to get clear ownership it was again about identity but the kirtland temple suit which was kind of a shock for us because we didn't have local council so the judge took our our brief which said the reorganized church is the true and lawful successor to an entitled to the property thereof joseph junior's church i think that's our language he just read it back which was great for us but then he said oh but you filed the case wrong case dismissed so the kirtland temple suit which would be familiar to member members of the community christ doesn't really have any legal standing um but at that point joseph iii just gave the temple to his church turned possession back over and it really passes through adverse possession which in ohio means that you own it you proclaim your ownership you care for it you maintain it 21 years and cloudy ownership becomes clear and that's really the mechanism that any of any of the latter-day saint churches were going to have to use because ownership was so mixed up in the 1830s and 40s so believe it or not that's a short answer blake raspberry asks i believe kim loving did much research on this topic do we have his work kim did an amazing job on this topic and his work is available online it's in a mormon history association journal i would google um mormon history association journal kim loving kirtland temple and it'll pop up um and i think that there are maybe a university of utah i think you can get mha journals digitally for free i think it's kim loving that compares the 1880s lawsuit and the outcome of that to if the rlds showed up to a baseball game and their opponents never showed up they would have lost the game anyway or something to that effect which i thought was a great comparison arriving to a baseball game your opponents aren't there and you still lose the game yeah it's it's not one of our prouder moments all right let's climb the stairs and have a look at the second floor so 33 steps you have to go up to get to the second level and here's what you see when you do this is the upper court it was going to be the home of something called the school of mine apostles as the name implies it was intended to be classroom space for missionary and priesthood training this is an inner court they called it or the upper part of the inner court and we would have climbed stairs in the outer court to get here so old testament tabernacle and temple language they also started to install in this room but weren't able to finish what they called veils or partitions at this point in time they're simply room dividers they become something different in nauvoo illinois in the 1840s but here simply room dividers so the plan is to wrap canvas around these large wooden rollers on the ceiling you would attach ropes to them thread them through little donut they look like powdered doughnut holes on the ceiling they would go into the ceiling into the crawl space down into the columns see if i can show you one and they were going to have windlasses um here you see a metal rod sticking out the side so you put a a crank on this rod and start turning and that would raise and lower these massive canvas curtains so there are openings between the pew boxes you're going to drop curtains here and here so one big classroom becomes four small ones and then they're also going to divide off around and between each level of the pulpits to give the privacy for people to study or pray the tears of pulpits are probably the most distinctive feature of the temple they're for the two priesthoods on the west melchizedek priesthood pulpits what we're looking at now on the east aaronic priesthood pulpits the letters represent different leadership quorum presidencies so p d a on the bottom repeated three times for the deacon's quorum presidency above that a pta for the teachers quorum presidency above that a p-a-p for the priests on top of b-p-a for the bishops who preside over the aaronic priesthood on the west on the bottom we're going to see a p-e-m for the elders quorum presidency an mhp for the high priests and it starts to get a little confusing a pmh for the high council this is confusing but remember at this point in time the the quorum of the twelve the apostles had no authority in a stake they were not supposed to be home they were supposed to be out on missions so anywhere the church was organized the high council had authority and the rest of the world the apostles were in charge but because they're not supposed to be home no seats for them then on top an mpc for the first presidency of the church the three people presiding over the entire church to confuse us they typically ignored these letters though and would sit not by office but rather by age older members on top to younger ones down bottom by nauvoo in the 1840s they templed a bit the temple they built here there are lots of cues on the pulpit certainly for quorum but a little more confusing by the time the folks who go west build their st george utah temple the letters are a little different again but what was most important is that they were a teaching tool everybody's a new member here every time they walk in these letters help teach them the administrative structure of their new church the benches are not attached they slip back and forth these desktops are later editions but they flip up and lock into place so you can face either end of the room depending on who's presiding at the time on the columns you see large greek frets pieces of wood cut out applied to form that pattern simple quick remember downstairs we're going to see something very different questions on the upper court or anything else we do have a question from lou shepherdson and lou asks why the pew boxes as opposed to more rows of pews was that related to keeping warm in the winter yeah the pew boxes come right out of their new england heritage so i'm in many ways kirkland temple is a new england meeting house and the pew boxes reflect that apparently um so that's just what they knew growing up that it would help keep heat in and the drafts off and you could bring foot warmers or soap stones with you heating devices they would sit on the floor and radiate heat so that a very much typical new england meeting house things that make the temple different from a typical new england meetinghouse we talked about one of them already tears of pulpits on both ends that is not typical another is the fact that the temple has windows on every wall even on the third floor with lots of little offices you're going to see windows on every wall including all the interiors so you can get light on the west side of the building from the rising sun in the east a third distinctive feature normally the second floor of the house of worship in new england at this time would be a gallery or balcony so you could sit either in in the balcony or if it was a gallery along the sides but this would be open and you'd be looking down into the first floor so this is very different to have two large almost identical rooms stacked one on top of the other not at all common this happens though because i think the temple grows out of two desperate needs these people had they understood that they had been commanded to have a school for their ministers so they they needed a place to teach their leaders and their their priesthood that's this floor the upper court they also were didn't have enough money to pay rent on the meeting house they were worshiping in they needed a place to gather together to worship that's the room below so those two distinct needs result in the two large almost identical rooms stacked one on top of the other ronald baldwin asks were the canvas room dividers ever actually installed and used the canvas room dividers ever installed and used i think on the second floor i think they're not finished so never installed no we we've discussed this sometimes passionately among some of the kirtland temple folk but i am not at all convinced in part because there's original rollers in a few of these columns uh let me see if i can get a better shot for you so for example you see three of them here and there is nowhere where where the wood on wood i believe would would create considerable wear patterns here i i don't see any evidence that these were actually ever used on the second floor downstairs they're in and functioning and used regularly in the 1830s i think they worked downstairs but they decided they could make them work better redesign the system start to install it on the second floor and are never able to finish it here yeah two more questions and i think you've answered these questions but i want to give you an opportunity to to say a little bit more if you want to uh myra elliott asks have the curtain mechanism then restored and sherry rushton asks what are the cutouts on the tall columns so have the curtains been restored so downstairs yes i think we put asbestos curtains back in in the late 19th century they did not survive and they are long gone so there are no veils or partitions or curtains in the temple today but there are mechanisms that they would have been operated by and the cutouts in the columns are accessed to those windlasses that would have controlled the veils controlled the curtains by putting a crank on these metal rods and turning so the ropes go up and into the crawl spaces and then back down uh attached to these wooden rollers here and here and cause these to spin to raise and lower the veils nolan and dion white ask when was the temple electrified was the temple electrified i'm embarrassed to say that it was long enough ago that i moved away that i have forgotten but it was surprisingly early early early 20th century and i think it's because somebody who owned the cleveland electric train system live nearby at moorland which is now lakeland community college just across the valley from kirtland so i believe that kirtland had electricity really pretty early probably because of this wealthy gentleman living not far away in continuing on that topic lou shepherdson asks did they have any other lighting in these main rooms for nighttime use other than the windows presumably the lights we now see are a much later addition yeah so the primary light source of course is the sun but they do meet at times what they called early or first candlelight and there's some physical evidence that i'll show you on the ceiling of the room below that suggests they had candle burning chandeliers four of them down there the reason i say candle and not whale oil is the nk whitney store day book survives and they are selling lots of candle wicking and very few lamp supplies so that's why i think they're candle burning downstairs four chandeliers we don't know what they looked like we don't know if they were turned wood or canned or what they were but there is physical evidence that they were there that is all the questions we have for now all right we're going to climb to the third floor so if we were actually climbing we'd be going up 33 steps again so 33 between each level and when we get here there are five attic offices or school rooms and the reason there are five of them is that we are in the attic at this point and so there are king post trusses built into these walls to support the roof so imagine a massive timber right here and a brace cutting across and another brace coming down another brace here so they simply wrapped the king post trusses with lath and plaster and those trusses sit on the columns in the rooms below so that's the width of these rooms matches the distance between each pair of columns in the two rooms below so once you wrap those king post trusses you end up with five long thin offices they held in these rooms in 1836 and 37 what they called the kirkland high school sydney rigdon talks about now he's talking about the far west missouri temple which didn't get built but he's talking about why they're going to build it and among other things he said we are tired of our people being taken advantage of by the more learned we are going to use the temple to teach them to read and write so they can take care of themselves and you see that lived out in kirtland as well through the kirtland high school three departments with students ranging in age from six through old thirty-year-old woodruff the departments were the the juvenile department where they would learn the rudiments of education how to read and write there was also an english department which wasn't just english but geography and grammar and arithmetic and then the classics which was latin and greek languages so i think they're not all here at the same time i think those students are coming and going throughout the day they also held a hebrew school here at times it was probably also in the schoolhouse behind times but a hebrew school they hired joshua satis to teach them hebrew he was extraordinarily talented they were greatly blessed to have found him some of his hebrew textbooks survive and in those textbooks you can find the word nauvu carrying with it connotations of beautiful so joseph certainly learned that in kirtland from joshua seyches in the evenings administrative quorums would take over these rooms high priests on monday nights 70s on tuesday nights elders on wednesday nights and then this room on the west was also the president's office and so joseph's office was here january 21st of 1836 that joseph had a vision of his brother alvin in the celestial kingdom that is later canonized by her friends in the church of jesus christ i think that's section 137 in the lds doctrine and covenants also here a committee meets to write the prayer of dedication for the temple um and then that's read in the lower court read from a printed document which was upsetting to some folks who thought the spirit shouldn't be constrained by saying a written prayer but it was on that occasion a written prayer written here delivered on the first floor or the lower court that's also one that was canonized not in community christ but in the church of jesus christ in 19 i'm sorry 1876 that's their section 109 of the lds doctrine and covenants questions on the third floor or anything else pam robison asks is there any special significance to the 33 steps between the different levels we have wonderful stories that we've made up through the years about special significance um you know some people think it's one year for uh each year christ's life some people think it's um related to masonry i i don't think there's symbolism there and we also have come up with wonderful symbolism in the decorative woodwork in the temple um really elaborate uh symbolism we would come to find meaning in the woodwork but what we didn't realize in many cases is yes there are ancient symbols in the temple woodwork um what's happening though is that that asher benjamin that that pattern book developer i talked about earlier he is basically stealing um engraved plates from english pattern books of the day and the english are fascinated by ancient cultures greek and roman cultures and others so yes there are ancient symbols in the woodwork of the temple but they're transmitted through these pattern books and that was an element that we didn't really understand until recent years when elwyn robison an architectural historian down at kent state was tremendously helpful in helping us understand the context in which the temple was built that is all the questions we have for this time and to the lower court we go so back down on the ground floor they would gather in this room on sunday mornings for hymns and prayers and sermons and testimonies they would serve sacrament or communion you see brown tables these are in front and back and they flip up and lock into place they would take a break they would go home they would come back for more hymns and prayers and sermons and testimonies they would go home for dinner some would then come back for choir practice you see choir lofts in the four corners and they would sing from all four corners at the same time i talked about jacob bump and truman angel the different craftsmen i wonder if we can get a good look at this keystone i got too close so on the west side you see a beautiful beaded keystone this design comes right out of asher benjamin's edition a lot of work very labor intensive contrast that with the keystone on the east i'm not sure if we'll get there or not um nope let me try again so this one is flat with little holes drilled in it to form a pattern much much simpler and quicker likely to work by your under truman angel so very different styles depending on on the age of the craftsman uh we talked about greek frets on the second floor but down here on the lower court you're going to see fluting on these columns grooves cut in to form the pattern just like upstairs the benches aren't attached they slip back and forth but because this is worship space versus a classroom space there are no desks in this in these pew boxes i talked about um lighting devices so these large plaster rings have metal hooks in the center and i believe that the chandeliers are suspended from those hooks and the soot from the candles would rise and some of it be trapped by those plaster rings we've got later photos that show a white ceiling with big black spots they're doing their job they're capturing the soot and helping to make it easier to clean they would gather to this room on thursdays they would fill up the room they would drop the curtains you see an opening here and let's see let me find the other opening right here so again one big room becomes four smaller ones they'd use these on thursdays for prayer meetings fill up the room drop the curtains assign an elder to each corner and have four services going at once uh it would speed things up allow more to participate but even with those curtains in place some of their thursday prayer meetings would go from ten in the morning to three or four in the afternoon they are generally presided over by joseph smith senior it was from this room that the temple was dedicated march 27 of 1836 for that service they squeezed somewhere between um 900 and a thousand people into this space 900 to a thousand according to joseph was as many as could be comfortably situated children on the laps of adults every seat and aisle were crowded and their dedication service lasted for seven to eight hours sydney rigged and preached that day from this second row from the top two and a half hours his sermon joseph smith delivered the prayer of dedication i think he's uh right here second row from the top in the center a prayer of dedication somewhere near a half an hour long there was a 15 or 20 minute break somewhere in that seven to eight hours but apparently the only people that left were mothers of infant children who had to go feed them the rest stayed knowing that if they left they wouldn't get back in hundreds didn't get in they were standing outside in the snow trying to listen through the open windows to the service that day imagine how disappointing some of those people must have been disappointed some of them must have been though some had spent two or three years of their lives building the temple they didn't get there early enough so they didn't get in to allow them to fully participate they decided to repeat the entire service of dedication on the following thursday edward partridge church leader there for both said the second dedication was even better and even longer than the first one there were months surrounding the temple dedication where the people were recording in their journals incredible spiritual experiences and talk about things like pillars of fire or tongues of fire on the roof of the temple they talk of speaking and singing in tongues and interpretations of tongues they talk about the temple being filled with the sound of a mighty rushing wind these accounts go on and on and on and as you probably have recognized they are using language from the new testament book the acts of the apostles to try and capture these experiences they didn't say we are living again these new testament times but they didn't have to because people recognized they were biblically literate enough to recognize that language and know that they were living again not just as david hallett has pointed out these people were not just symbolically remembering new testament the new testament church they were living it again or doing their best to anyway one of the best known of those what they called a pentecostal season one of the best known of those experiences april 3rd of 1836 one week following the temple dedication there's once again a sunday night afternoon service going on once again about a thousand people present the curtains are dropped the room is four they're blessing babies and confirming new members in these four areas while that's happening it seems joseph smith and oliver calvary retire into the pulpit to pray they don't tell us exactly where i think it's probably safe to assume somewhere here they drop the curtains or veils around them they kneel in prayer as they finish they record a vision of the lord on the breastwork of the before them coming to accept of the dedication of the house of course april 3rd of 1836 is easter so joseph and oliver having a vision of the risen lord on easter sunday the scribe also records accounts of moses elias and elijah appearing in vision to joseph and oliver on that day we have covered lots and lots of information in a hurry so questions about things we have talked about for things we haven't we have lots of questions and the first one comes from jean shirts and gene asks is there an all-seeing eye in the kirtland temple there is not an all-seeing eye on the kirtland temple um and there's also now and nowhere that says holiness to the lord although i wonder if there might have been something here in the 1830s and later who actually probably also in the 1830s they're painting slogans on the walls where we're not positive they're there in the 1830s but they're definitely there not too long after um slogans some of which would be kind of interesting today things like no cross no crown and some things in latin and uh stuff like that painted on the walls outside on the front the entablature the sign on the front originally said house of the lord built by the church of the latter-day saints a.d 1834 as most of you probably know remember that the name of the church is the church of the latter-day saints at this point in time so joseph establishes the church of christ 1830 1834 they become the church of the latter-day saints 1838 the church of jesus christ latter-day saints martin harris stays in kirtland for decades continues to worship in the temple he apparently thought that the name of the church should never have been changed from the church of christ to the church of the latter-day saints so he sent somebody up in 1860 to paint out built by the church of the latter day saints and paint in built by the church of christ so the the first name of the church is on the temple second and the second name of the church is on the temple first very confusing lock you talked about uh the woodwork and a lot of the decorative work throughout the lower court and myra elliott asks all the molding is wood and not plaster is there any plaster within that all the molding is wood and not plaster so the plaster the lath and plaster ceilings and plaster walls would have been there but no plaster moldings in the building that i've seen any evidence for now that the rings where they went down let me back up you're right these are plaster and we actually have and it might be an 1830s tool or it might be later but we we have a plaster sweep so it's got a little um kind of point in the middle and you could sweep it around in this in the wet plaster to form these rings so that survives in our collections in kirtland i'm guessing we found it in one of the crawl spaces we did find a lot of great treasures in the crawl spaces and underneath the seats in the pulpits uh lori long asks how long did it take to build the kirtland temple and how many people were involved the temple was built between 1833 and 1836 and i don't think we have a solid number for the the total of folks involved there is a day in kirtland where people get blessed who have worked on the temple but it's clearly not a complete list i think that's in the kirtland council minute book clearly not a complete list because there are folks like women at least one who was driving a wagon hauling stone from the quarry to the temple and other women who would have been making the veils and likely maybe the carpets um that didn't get a blessing so more involved than show up on that list so i don't think we have a a real number michael wellington asks how would they heed the temple they heated the temple with apparently four wood-burning stoves in the cellar and in the winter months and only in the winter months you'd see stovepipes coming out of the floors one here one over here um let me move back so you can get a better view of it so one here and then one on the other side so four pipes running up and by doing that you're getting um heat radiating from the pipes all the way up and then i think they come together and out i don't know if it's one or two central chimneys um we we know that those pipes were there because in i think it's 1837 when there's dissent in the church uh i think it's joseph smith senior is preaching and the dissenters storm the temple uh and as they rush in they knock over a stove pipe you just imagine soot flying everywhere um they eject the belligerence and continue the services of the day talk about a fire hazard our next question comes from millie gents and milly asks is there no padding on the benches on the second level this is a question after my own heart let's talk about those benches lock there is no padding on the benches on the second level now um i don't know that those benches are original i i was stunned at what appears to be the age of these benches on the lower court they may or may not be original but they are built of square nails and when you look carefully at the wood you see reciprocal cut saw marks meaning the blade moving straight up and down versus circular cut those are both things that you want to see in 1830s work so they might i think it would be stunning if they had survived but they are very old um and there is a reference um i can't remember the date on it but uh a reference to people who believed that some of the original padding on the benches had survived they said it was a little red flower pattern and that they tried to preserve it by not letting anybody sit on the padding and then finally they broke down and uh women and children sit on it and they weren't to shreds and it's gone um so they might have had padding on the benches downstairs originally while we're here take a look at the width of the planks of lumber that the pew boxes are made out of and upstairs there's some that are even wider in the pulpits so that's another thing that you want to see when you're trying to figure out what's original and what's not so these are wonderfully wide planks telling you that they're probably old growth trees the second floor the pew boxes there are built most of them of planks six inches wide very narrow very uniform these not uniform quite wide and when the sun hits these right you can see it kind of a rippling on the surface from the ham planing each stroke of the plane would leave just a slight ripple so so it seems very likely that these are the original pew boxes on the first floor it's incredible how much the temple has stayed intact over the decades it really is sherry reshton is asking about the choir lofts and she says what were the cupboards under the choir used for what were the cupboards under the choir lofts used for it's a trick so i wonder if i can get in one of them yep there we go so you actually it's a door that opens up and tiny little steps that you climb up to get into each of the elevated choir boxes so each one higher than the one before so they look like cupboards but they're really elevated pew boxes and the same is true over here on the sides you climb up tiny little steps and can go in and these are extraordinarily uncomfortable that's um uh a right angle between the the bench and the the back of the box very uncomfortable during the dedication of the temple remember i mentioned that there are no seats for the apostles at this point in time because they're not supposed to be there but they were there of course during the temple dedication and they were treated as visiting dignitaries so on one side on the west or melchizedek uh pulpits was the high council of kirtland and on the other side the quorum of the twelve apostles in back on one side the high council of zion or missouri and on the other side the presidents of 70. there were also um choristers sitting in some of these boxes as well as scribes who were taking minutes taking notes of what was happening that's why that very first box just the first one these do have a desktop which flips up locks into place so that the scribe would have a place to ride it's hard to imagine sitting in those pew boxes or the choir loft for seven to eight hours at a time well i've been in them for three hours at a time and it was excruciatingly painful we have run out of questions but uh nanette disney did mention in the chats that her father richard fenn preached his very first sermon in the kirtland temple pam robeson also mentions that the pee boxes are great for kids to be able to sit on the floor and color during reunion services yep there is another question this is from myra elliott she says are there any other church buildings of this style buildings of this style so this is vernacular it's um it was not uncommon apparently and anything i know about architecture i know from elwyn robinson and anything i get wrong is my fault not his um but vernacular so it is a it is a mash up of the styles that they remembered from the places they grew up in and that they liked so it is not one architectural style but numerous styles mixed together um greek revival georgian coins those those and these are kind of elongated which is unusual but those stones on the corners of the temple outside those are georgian and style they're coins q-u-o-i-n-s i think there's some federalist features so all kinds of styles mixed together in this part of ohio at this time there was kind of a gothic revival um taking place so the the the pointed windows uh gothic but you'll see some of those in churches in this part of ohio at this time this was a new connecticut or the connecticut western reserve i think one of the kings of england had granted connecticut acclaim to all of the land from their western border to where the water ran which was some interpreted as the pacific ocean so imagine connecticut having this claim to this long thin strip after the revolutionary war they're convinced to give up that claim if in return they're given what would become the northeast corner of ohio it couldn't be connectic if they had to sell it so they did they created the connecticut land company and sent folks out to survey and begin selling what that meant though is that this is a really strong new england cultural area so this part of ohio if you drive around out in the country you run into all these little towns and it feels like they have picked up new england villages and dropped them on the shores of lake erie a question from harston jared and he asks what can you tell us of the foundation and level below grade so just below this floor is a cellar or crawl space um just deep enough that i can walk through most of it it's got a dirt floor and we later dug out a little deeper parts of it to put our heating and air conditioning and humidity controls in down below the walls again they start at about two feet and there are no footings so normally you would today build a wide base to to spread the weight of the wall out and these are very heavy walls because they're stone so you want a wide base to spread the weight out that wasn't understood at this point in time so there is no footing the wall just starts at two feet and away it goes and it barely makes it under theoretical frost line and this part of ohio has earthquakes so we have given uh those walls some help by doing something called compaction grouting so drilling underneath them and injecting grout or mortar which forms these solid balls that provide some additional strength to the soil under each of the columns is a sandstone pier as well so we also strengthened the area under the columns something that elwin points out in his book which is really well done it's called the first mormon temple design construction historical context i think it is uh byu i think published that elwynn realized that um either they weren't quite clear what they were doing early on or they didn't fully understand how to build a big building but right under this location there's a sandstone pier um and then there's another one here under this spot and another one here actually makes more sense if we go to the other side let's look from the foyer if we can get there so under this spot a sandstone pier but nothing rests on it nothing touches it there's another sandstone pier here and then this is a timber that goes all the way up to support the west side of the bell tower and here's another timber hiding in this right here sits on a stand sandstone pier that also runs all the way up to support the west side of the bell tower the east side of the bell tower sits on this sandstone wall but they're trying to figure out how to support the west side and it's a huge bell tower and very heavy but as you've probably figured out this pier has nothing resting on it they built it and abandoned it because at some point either they realized you can't transfer weight through windows and a door or they decided to put a window and a door on top of that spot we're not sure which happened but they're kind of figuring it out as they go because that bell tower is so heavy through the years these timbers shrink and compress so one account talks about well even today you can see that the bell tower leans slightly to the west and one account which i have a hard time believing but it says by the 1880s there was an 11 inch sag in the floor because of the weight of the bell tower they unhooked everything and slowly jacked it back up so there's not an 11 inch sag today noel gothka asks or says i'm so intrigued what kind of fun treasures were found under the pews and in the crawl spaces go for it bart this is your area of expertise some of the things that i can remember uh there were sunday school class books um david howlett did a an article on some of the lessons that were being taught in sunday school and those were found underneath the benches of the pulpits on the second floor there was also an old offering what were those called it was a box that was on the end of a stick that the deacons would take down the rows to pick up offerings during the services there's a formal name for these boxy offering plates but one of those was was found there was minutes from kirtland congregation business meeting or maybe it was a kirtland high council meeting um their minutes from the 1920s and it came across as kind of a journal that included minutes from a number of meetings and when you go through the the immediate the minutes uh one of the things that really stood out to me was that during that business meeting there was a heated discussion in the 1920s on whether it was appropriate for church members to play baseball on sundays and i'm assuming this is sunday afternoons um but those are some of the treasures that i can remember like do you remember any others i do not remember others but i think we're still having that argument aren't we except it's sunday mornings now oh baseball and sunday mornings i think the that those minutes were found in the crawl spaces uh didn't george lund find him in the crawl spaces i think he did there was also still one of the giant wooden rollers from the second floor if we can get to it one of these big rollers is still in one of the crawl spaces that never got installed it actually was supposed to go above in the crawl space right here so there's a kind of a slit in the ceiling here as well as here and here and here so in these areas the canvas was actually going to be drawn up through the ceiling and then this little roller and this one would serve like a door you would just raise the canvas above the aisle we have two similar questions uh joanne guthrie asks is there a bell in the bell tower and when is the bell wrong and elizabeth else asks is the bell wrong for any services what can you tell us about that bell luck there is a bell in the bell tower they're trying to get it in the 1830s wwe phelps writes to his wife sally and says a great effort is about to be undertaken to procure a bell for the lord's house i don't think it's accomplished though or at least i don't have any references to it until 1890 it's from the buckeye bell foundry in cincinnati ohio and it weighs somewhere over a thousand pounds we ring the bell on sunday mornings at nine o'clock to call the locals to worship uh for decades those services in the temple and then in the late 1950s or mid mid 50s moved across the street uh to a new chapel there they were kind of monopolizing the temple and so folks coming to as tourists were having a hard time seeing it unless they wanted to sit through a long service so they moved across the street um but yes still a bell we also would ring it um anytime there's some kind of a national bell ringing activity we typically would ring it i'm occasionally on things like new year's eve depending on if anybody is still up so it is still wrong lavon lemay says wonderful tour thank you a silly plaster stucco question my sister was a guide there in 1981 and said when there was plaster work done and there were pieces of china in the fallen plaster mixed with lots of human hair what was the story with all that hair and lock before you answer that question lavon i would love to hear uh your sister's name who was a guide there in 1981 if you could send us her name either in the chat or in the q a i'd love to to see who that was so what can you tell us about human hair in the plaster put human hair in the plaster so lots of glass and crockery in the stucco and lots of hair in the plaster we turned it into human hair at some point but but i don't really think it was human hair it was really common to put animal hair in plaster as a binding agent it holds it together so that was just just part of what you normally did but i think we were trying to make with without understanding how plaster worked i think we were trying to make sense at some point of well why is there hair in here and we ended up developing and i don't know if your sister had heard these or not but wonderful traditions about how the women sacrificed their hair they cut their hair and and donated it for the plaster i have no reason to think that's accurate but we did end up sharing that understanding eventually of course we also have the wonderful accounts of the women crushing their fine china and glassware unfortunately nobody wrote it down at the time what they did write down is that they're sending out young people together old crockery and glass they crushed it even finer and they dumped it into the stucco so i i do not know that that the powerful tradition of crushing fine china and glassware is is actually true um if if it's not true it should have been because that is the kind of sacrifice that people were making the women were making truman coe a non-member in kirtland said that the women of the church were asked to give up even the necessaries of life in order to build the temple and when you see that phrase in the 1830s that means adequate food clothing and shelter so i think a more significant level of sacrifice than than china and if it was not true in the 1830s it became true in the 1950s i have met a young woman who because of those wonderful stories of sacrifice pulled out from under her bed she lived in kirtland her toy china tea set asked that it be crushed and dumped into the stucco when the temple was re-stuck out in the 1950s and she could actually show me where some of the pieces were once it gets painted over it's really hard to see um but but if it was not true in the 30s it became true in the 1950s that's a great story lavan responded that leslie higginson is her sister and leslie still has a piece of the plaster from her time in kirtland in the 1980s our last question comes from jean shirts and jean says you might mention your book house of the lord the story of the kirtland temple it shows much of what you discussed yeah lock why aren't you talking about your book i forgot there was one tell us all about it barb well it's true there is a book it's about 45 pages long and as gene mentioned it's called house of the lord the story of the kirtland temple and it's published by john whitmer books and it's available online and at the museum stores in nauvoo and kirtland and speaking of of books we might take a moment to to look at some of the books that are available for anyone who is interested in learning more about kirtland temple history and architecture or kirtland history there are a few books to consider if you're interested in kirtland temple history there's two great books out there the first is the kirtland temple the biography of a shared mormon sacred space by david holland you can see that book is on the right and roger lonnies also wrote a book called the kirtland temple a historical narrative that book came out right before the 150th anniversary of the kirtland temple so it's got a little bit of age to it but still a pretty good book you know if kirtland temple architecture is your thing you're going to want to check out elwynn robison's book the first mormon temple design construction and historic context of the kirtland temple lachlan has mentioned this book a couple of times it's an excellent book in addition a smaller book but equally as good is one that ron romick published called behind the scenes tour of the kirtland temple from basement to bell tower this is based on the literal behind the scenes tour of the kirtland temple and i encourage you all if you're ever in kirtland to take advantage of that behind the scenes tour it it does go from basement to bell tower and it's perfect if you're interested in architecture lastly if you are interested in learning more about the kirtland period in all its glorious historical context i can't recommend enough mark staker's book park and ou people the historical setting of joseph smith's ohio revelations this book is around 600 pages long but well worth the read for church history enthusiasts you'll enjoy every page like a nice rich dark chocolate just it's rich and full of flavor you'll really enjoy the book now each night of the summer series will end with a favorite story about the historic site featured that night and since tonight was all about the kirtland temple luck do you have a favorite kirtland temple story you wish to to end with tonight a nice take-home gift for those in attendance oh and you're muted they'll enjoy the story much better if they can hear you i think i have a different favorite story every time i'm asked but um for some reason i've been thinking about the fact that joseph smith in 1830s kirtland counseled the members he said if god gives you a manifestation keep it to yourself you're not supposed to talk about it despite that counsel people were so overwhelmed by the experiences surrounding the temple dedication that they clearly are talking about it because within 10 days of the dedication a non-member in kirkland writes to his sister and says they say the temple is lit without candles i just i don't know why i love that i love it that is a great story and it reminded me that myra elliott's first question had to do with that henry howe engraving and i want to circle back to that for anyone who is just dying to figure out what it was that myron was talking about here you'll notice the engraving that dates back to 1846 we believe this building here was the methodist meeting house and this building over here we think is the kirtland safety society bank but i've also heard people speculate it could have been oliver cowdery's law office where do you stand on that lock you think it's the bank i think henry howe thought it was the bank um and i think it could be i think it probably is uh and then the methodist meeting house that's the second methodist meeting house the first one had burned and with that uh we'll bring our evening program to close thank you so much lock for taking us on this virtual tour of the kirtland temple that was awesome and thank you to our friends in the audience for attending tonight and going through the kirtland temple with us we hope you will join us next week when we take a look at and explore the joseph smith historic site in beautiful nauvoo illinois so if you haven't already registered be sure to do so on our website and i will drop the link where you'll want to go in order to to register so until next thursday take care everyone keep reading your church history and have a good night you

Channel: Community of Christ Historic Sites Foundation

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Id: -y6703K8H4s

Length: 83min 45sec (5025 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2022