100 years ago
On Nov. 5, 1903, the Church purchased the old Carthage Jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith and Patriarch Hyrum Smith had been assassinated.
The cost of the building and grounds of two acres was $4,000.
This was the first historical site purchased in the new century, and was followed in the decade by the purchase of 25 of 63 acres of the original 63-acre tract in Independence, Mo. The Joseph Smith birthplace was purchased in 1905, and the 100-acre Smith family farm in Manchester township near Palmyra, N.Y., including the Sacred Grove, was purchased in 1907.
At the Illinois jail, according to Elder Joseph A. McRae, caretaker of the facility and director of the Bureau of Information in 1944, the well had been filled in and a French window added when the Church purchased the building in 1903.
He surmised that the building had been divinely protected because had it been part of the courthouse, it would have been torn down, or had it been close to the business district, it would have been removed.
"It is the oldest building in Carthage, and the only one built entirely of stone. There is no doubt that it had a mission to fill— to be a monument to the memory of the men who gave their lives here. Call it what you will, we still think it a miracle building," he said. (Church News, June 24, 1944.)
