A building that once served as the residence of Bishop Newel K. Whitney, an early Church leader, is being renovated for use as a location where visitors can research their early Nauvoo ancestors, including those who were enlisted in the Mormon Battalion.
Located at Parley and Partridge streets in the historic section of the city, the two-story structure has recently come into the Church's possession. It had been a private residence. It was purchased in the early 1960s by Nauvoo Restoration Inc., the Church's non-profit corporation that has restored many of the original homes and shops from the 1840s, when Nauvoo was the Church's headquarters.Under terms of a living trust, the owner, Genevieve Huffman, was allowed to live in the home until her recent death, according to Elder Grant Fry, manager of Nauvoo Restoration Inc.
The Whitney home will now serve as a unique Church family history center called the Lands and Records Office. Those wanting to do typical family history research can go to the designated family history center located in the Nauvoo Illinois Stake Center a few blocks to the east and north.
The Lands and Records Office gives visitors who have Nauvoo ancestors the opportunity to research their progenitors who once lived there. Visitors there can obtain copies of extracts from journals, diaries and other records as well as maps depicting property boundaries of early Nauvoo residents.
Up to now, the Lands and Records Office has been located inside the Church's Nauvoo Visitors Center. The service has proven both interesting and helpful to visitors who have progenitors in Nauvoo, said Elder Hugh W. Pinnock of the Seventy, president of the North America Central area.
He said the project to convert the building for its new use can properly be described as a remodeling and a restoration. It already had been extensively altered since the 1840s when Bishop Whitney lived in it.
Completion is expected in early July.
Part of the work has been to apply brick that probably was made in Nauvoo in the 1840s. The brick recently was salvaged from a farmhouse in Farmington, Iowa, that was torn down, Elder Fry said. BYU students on a Semester in Nauvoo program helped salvage the brick, said Elder V. Dallas Merrell of the Seventy, second counselor in the area presidency.
Almost all of the work on the building's restoration was accomplished by full-time Church-service missionaries, noted Elder J. Richard Clarke of the Seventy, first counselor in the area presidency. He added that often, while the brethren worked in the Whitney home, their wives would be conducting tours of the other historic sites in Nauvoo.
One of the prominent figures in early Church history, Newel K. Whitney gave shelter to the Prophet Joseph Smith in his store in Kirtland, Ohio, in the 1830s. That store was the location of the School of the Prophets during the winter of 1833, and was the scene of a number of significant revelations, including the Word of Wisdom.
Brother Whitney was ordained the second bishop of the Church in Kirtland in December 1831. He came to Nauvoo in 1839, where he built the residence at Parley and Partridge streets.
