Footnotes
See Letter from Edward Hunter, 10 May 1842; Letter from Horace Hotchkiss, 9 May 1842; Times and Seasons, 16 May 1842, 3:790; and Letter to Parley P. Pratt and Others, 12 June 1842. Nauvoo bishop George Miller later described this as an overwhelming period during which British immigrants and poor Saints from the eastern United States crowded into Nauvoo: “The poor had to be cared for, and labor created that they might at least earn part of their subsistence—there not being one in ten persons that could set themselves to work, to earn those indispensable things for the comfort of their families. My brethren of the Committee of the Nauvoo House Association and the Committee of the Temple, all bore a part in the employment of laborers, and the providing food for them.” (George Miller, St. James, MI, to “Dear Brother,” 26 June 1855, in Northern Islander [St. James, MI], 16 Aug. 1855, [3].)
Northern Islander. St. James, MI. 1850–1856.
Financing for the temple appears to have run into further difficulty in summer 1842. A 25 June 1842 notice from Willard Richards as temple recorder informed members that notes due the trustee-in-trust for labor on the temple had been left with the temple building committee for collection and reminded the Saints that “your contracts with your God are sacred; the labor is wanted immediately.” The notice also reminded members to pay the notes that had come due on property they had donated for the temple construction. (Willard Richards, “Notes,” Wasp, 25 June 1842, [3].)
The Wasp. Nauvoo, IL. Apr. 1842–Apr. 1843.
By February 1841, some Latter-day Saint men in the Nauvoo area began donating, as their annual tithing, one day of labor out of every ten to the construction of the temple. Over time this practice apparently became more standardized, and the temple recorder assigned a fixed value for this labor of thirty-one dollars a year; this was based on a payment rate of one dollar a day for one tenth of the number of days in the year, minus Sundays. With this standardization of labor tithing, some individuals paid the thirty-one dollars owed on their labor tithing in goods, conflating what was intended as labor tithing with property tithing. (“Ecclesiastical,” Times and Seasons, 1 Feb. 1841, 2:296; Book of the Law of the Lord, 28, 30, 32.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
See “Bench and Moulding Planes,” Wasp, 16 July–1 Oct. 1842, [4].
The Wasp. Nauvoo, IL. Apr. 1842–Apr. 1843.
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Bench planes were hand tools “with flat soles used mainly on the bench for preparing and smoothing the workpiece.” A molding plane was a specialized type of plane used to cut molding along the edge of a board. The precursors of nineteenth-century American planes were created and modified by European craftsmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (Salaman, Dictionary of Tools, 305, 338–342; Greber, History of the Woodworking Plane, 87–97; Welsh, Woodworking Tools, 15, 17.)
Salaman, R. A. Dictionary of Tools Used in the Woodworking and Allied Trades, c. 1700–1970. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.
Greber, Josef M. The History of the Woodworking Plane (Die Geschichte des Hobels): From the Stone Age to the Development of Woodworking Factories in the Early 19th Century. Translated by Seth W. Burchard. N.p.: Early American Industries Association, 1991.
Welsh, Peter C. Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900. Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, Paper 51. [Washington DC]: [Smithsonian Institution], [1966].
It is unclear why JS requested these tools specifically and what he intended workmen to use them for. Carpenters had completed the wooden baptismal font the previous winter, and the walls of the temple were only a few feet high. Builders may have been creating scaffolding or framing for the exterior walls at that point, but there is no indication that any interior carpentry work was being done on the temple in summer 1842. In October 1842, JS made enclosing the baptistry a priority, and by 28 October a temporary floor was laid to create the first floor of the temple. The request for woodworking planes in July 1842 may have been in preparation for these developments, as well as for additional future interior work. (Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 13–14, 19–22, 32; McBride, House for the Most High, 106–127.)
Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.
McBride, Matthew. A House for the Most High: The Story of the Original Nauvoo Temple. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007.
The temple recorder’s office was located in JS’s general store on Water Street in Nauvoo. (Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 16.)
Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.
Subsequent reprintings of the notice omit this last line.
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