Recently, I have been contacted by several people who have visited the newly purchased church history sites in Nauvoo, IL.  These people have been concerned about some potentially false information that was being shared as fact during the tour of the Red Brick Store.  I decided to try to contact those who may have been involved in writing the script or those who might have the power to alter it.  The following is an email I sent to a few of these individuals.

Dear [Leaders and Historians],

My purpose for writing is to try to help correct a statement that is being made by the missionaries during tours of the Red Brick Store regarding a new mural being painted on the wall for the May 4th, 1842 endowment. I am sure there are plenty of hard feelings and no shortage of disputes for the missionaries to deal with while giving tours in these newly acquired sites. I imagine there is also no shortage of opinions and unsolicited advice being offered. I have no desire to add to the former, and I apologize in advance for adding to the latter, but, while this may seem like a small issue, it is one error that could be quite easily corrected that would at least help lessen the perception of inaccurate history, and even dishonesty. I have researched and produced work on this topic, so in the past month I have received three separate emails or phone calls from people who have visited Nauvoo telling me about this statement they heard on the tour. One was from a concerned fellow historian who, like me, is a member of the church, and the other two were from people who are not members of the church and used this as, in their minds, additional evidence that our church does not tell the truth. I would like to help remedy that opinion, at least on this particular issue, to whatever degree I can, so I thank you for your attention.

The specific part of the missionary script that the people who have contacted me objected to was this (particularly offending passage in bold,) “When these men arrived, they found the upper room of Joseph’s store transformed. On the wall was a newly painted mural. Small trees and plants stood nearby, suggesting a garden setting. Another part of the room was sectioned off with a rug hung up like a curtain.”

When I heard this I recognized that it was taken directly from Saints chapter 37 pg 453, which is what I was investigating when I did this study. It says, “On May 4, 1842, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and Willard Richards found the upper room of Joseph’s store transformed. On the wall was a newly painted mural. Small trees and plants stood nearby, suggesting a garden setting. Another part of the room was sectioned off with a rug hung up like a curtain.”  Since it came from Saints it is easy to understand why this was included in the missionary script. I understand that trying to change Saints might be a more difficult challenge, but this claim is deeply problematic and, while it would be difficult to correct it in Saints, I hope it might be more possible to at least correct it in the missionary script so that missionaries won’t be put in a position of being given, and unintentionally passing on, false information.


I believe the easiest way to explain why the story about the mural being painted for the endowment is problematic is simply to look at the source that it is based on. The ultimate source for this claim, which all other books or pamphlets making this claim rely on, is the paper, “Archaeological Investigations at the Joseph Smith Red Brick Store Nauvoo, Illinois,” By Robert T. Bray with a Historical Introduction by F. Mark McKiernan. It was challenging to track down this paper when I was doing work on this several months ago, but I was finally able to find it in the Community of Christ archives. (I am not aware of whether or not this paper was included in the recent purchase of documents and properties by the Church, but I will be happy to forward the copies of these pages that I have if necessary.) Here is the relevant portion from pages 73-74, (bold and italics are mine):

“Sometime after the original construction and painting of the walls, a mural or fresco was done in watercolors on the north half of the west wall on the second floor. Unfortunately, not even the general nature of the subject matter could be determined. The soft browns, blues, yellows, and gray-greens would seem to indicate a landscape or pastoral subject.

“One sample has a whitewash over blue on red; another has blue on red, and several have gray-blue on red. These are all from the second floor, west wall and were part of the mural. It appears that part of this wall was a basic red as well as whitewashed and unpainted. The Mormon period colors were red, unpainted, and whitewashed. The mural was somewhat later.
“It has been suggested that the mural was done by David Smith, who lived in the store for a time and who is known to have been a painter. (Stobaugh; McKiernan, Personal Communications)”

The archaeological study of the store, the source for our understanding that there was ever a mural at all, clearly states that the mural was painted after the Saints had left to go west. If the mural was indeed painted by David Hyrum, whom Emma was pregnant with at the time of Joseph’s death, it would have been decades later. Especially since, if I am not mistaken, David lived in the red brick store after his mental troubles had begun, so not before the 1870’s.


Saints lists three sources for this claim, which I will quickly go over just to remove any doubt. Footnote 37 on page 453 includes “Lucius N. Scovil, Letter to the Editor, Jan. 2, 1884, Deseret Evening News, Feb. 11, 1884, [2]; Launius and McKiernan, Joseph Smith, Jr.’s Red Brick Store, 28; see also McBride, House for the Most High, 100, note 10.”

I have looked extensively into each of these and will be happy to explain them in more depth if that would be helpful. The first source, Lucius Sovil’s letter to the editor, says nothing about the mural (I will attach a copy of the article and a link to the newspaper below.) The next two sources, Launius and McKiernan’s Joseph Smith Jr.’s Red Brick Store, page 28, and Matthew McBride’s House for the Most High, page 100, note 10, are the sources relevant to the claim about the mural. One of them cites the original source quoted above, The Archeological Investigations, and the other simply cites the first. I am unsure why Saints chose to cite these two sources rather than just citing the original Archeological Investigation since it just creates an unnecessary loop of citations, but here are the relevant quotations from each book. The first is the long, out of print 1985 RLDS pamphlet entitled “Joseph Smith, Jr.’s Red Brick Store” 

Page 28 says, “The men apparently prepared the room by painting a mural of a pastoral scene in the northwest corner and by arranging several sprigs of cassis, olive branches, cedar boughs, and other evergreens about the room. This pastoral setting paralleled the Garden Room in later Mormon temples and was probably the model for such later buildings.50 Footnote 50 cites three sources for these various claims, John Bennett’s anti-Mormon History of the Saints for the sprigs of cassis, olive branches and cedar boughs, James E. Talmage’s The House of the Lord for a description of the Garden Room in later temples, and finally, Robert T. Bray’s Archaeological Investigations at the Joseph Smith Red Brick Store for the claim about the mural. This is a dishonest source since RLDS historian, F. Mark McKiernan, co-author of this pamphlet, also wrote the historical introduction for the Archeological Study, and is the source of the personal communication with Stobaugh about David Hyrum being the most likely artist. He therefore should have been aware of when the mural was painted and should not have misrepresented that information in this pamphlet.


The final source cited, Mathew McBride’s book, makes the same claim about the mural but instead of citing the original Archeological Study, cites the dishonest RLDS pamphlet. He writes, “Archeological evidence suggests that the men further prepared the room by painting a pastoral mural in the northwest corner and then arranged various plants to represent the Garden of Eden”11 Footnote 11: Roger D. Launius and F. Mark Mckiernan, Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store, Western Illinois Monograph Series, number 5 (Macomb, Illinois: Western Illinois University, 1993), 28.

Again, it is unclear to me why Saint cites both books since the McBride book simply references the RLDS pamphlet for the same claim for which the RLDS pamphlet is already cited. But as you can see, the ultimate and only source for this information about the mural is Archaeological Investigations at the Joseph Smith Red Brick Store Nauvoo Illinois, by Rober T. Bray, with F. Mark McKiernan, which again, clearly states that the mural was painted after the Saints had left Nauvoo.


I very much hope that a claim this easily disproved will be carefully examined and if, as it appears, there are no better sources to support it, I hope it will be quickly edited out of the missionary script. Even if this quote remains in Saints, I think it is a fair assumption that many, if not most, of the people coming through the tour have likely not read Saints, so the tour will be the only place they will hear this claim. If they then, perhaps when doing further study about their experience, happen upon information about the sources, it will likely turn what could be a faith promoting experience into something quite different. I think it would be wonderful for historians and others who are familiar with these sources who come through these tours to not be struck by this kind of bad information and thus lose more respect for our church. (The historians who contacted me may have had other objections to things that were said — I don’t know. What I do know is that this was the one thing that stuck out to each of them enough to make them take the time to call or email to tell me about it. I would love this to not happen anymore.)


Thank you for your service and for taking the time to read this email, and for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Michelle Stone

P.S. Here is the copy of and link to the Lucius Scovil Letter to the Editor (just so you can double check that it doesn’t mention the mural, which would have been a major part of the preparations.) It is also worth noting that as far as I have been able to discover from researching all of the men claimed to have been involved in the preparations,  there is no indication that any of them were artists who would have been capable of painting a mural. It is also worth thinking about what an achievement it would have been to plan, design and carry out a large wall mural of a pastoral scene in less than a day. The murals in the Utah temples, which it is being compared to, took much, much longer than that to accomplish. Even Minerva Teichert, an extremely talented and experienced artist who was renowned for how prolific she was and how quickly she worked, took 23 days (even working with an assistant) to paint a mural in the Manti temple. While the Scovil source is not a direct refutation of the mural, as the Archaeological Study is, it does provide supporting evidence to disprove the claim about the mural.


I was so happy when I received the following response:

Thank you for sharing this great research with us, Sister Stone. We will take this up to the right people to make this change.

Church History Department