I had a personal tour of the RLDS in Illinois at Nauvoo. Very interesting. Also saw the jail where Joseph Smith Jr. was kept and the window he jumped from when shot. The people at both places were very friendly and welcoming. Nice folks but .....
I’ve been to the Temple in Independence, Missouri. Quite a building.
...But loaded to the gills with whacky ideas.
So?
You might want to read those accounts of J. Smith closely (particulalry those from non Mormon sources). It is entirely plausible that Smith was shot by one of his ownn (either to fulfill a sick ‘prophecy’ or because of the chaos).
I have been to Nauvoo (visiting my mom in Quincy when she lived there and she wanted to see it.....she liked older architecture). It is well preserved but the story that the acholytes give you is so much fluff and stuff. There are small kernels of truth to it but on the whole it is a very jaded presentation. Preservation is well done
The guide told us about Joseph Smith getting shot which was upsetting and the golden plates. I didn't quite believe in the golden plates as more than an imaginative tale, but I asked my father, "Daddy, what happened to the golden plates?"
"Why an angel took them back to heaven?" with a chuckle. Mormonism was never discussed in our family again, correction it was when we visited SLC.
My father liked the history of it and some distant cousins in Illinois were Mormons. It's quite interesting where my studies have led me.
My great great uncle went off to the Gold Rush in 1849 following a wagon train out of Galesburg, Illinois. His friend, David Cook was with him. I made contact with a history buff in Galesburg who had read an article about my great uncle's departure and when they went through Wyoming, they left the trail at either Fort Laramie or another place and had to bypass SLC because the Mormons were out to get David Cook. They didn't like apostates although his family still believed, they had no place to gather as it was too far (from farms in rural Knoxville, Illinois).
Anyway our family history tells of my gr gr uncle sending back three gold rings, one for each sister. After that he drops off all records and oral accounts.
I wanted to find out what happened to him, where he was buried. I happened to run a google search on David Cook and found some personal letters in the Special Collections Department of the University at Bloomington, Indiana.
Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Cook MSS
So I called, and a clerk got the collection and skimmed thru it. He came to a letter about my gr gr uncle with his name which was garbled but it had to have been he (nobody uses nominative case correct grammar to that extent any more I doubt, maybe it should be him). I asked if I could have copies of the letters. He said I could only have half.
So I sent the copying costs, I was sent the letters. They were all written by David Cook who had settled in San Jose. In one dated early March 1850, he wrote home to Knox County, IL where my family also lived that he had "Mr. Kimball had written him the melancholy intelligence of the death of N. H********. So he would have died late 1849 or early 1850. I could find no more.
But as I poured through the letters, history came alive. David Cook hadn't left the Mormon Church but joined a breakaway sect called the Brewsterites. He wrote about the wagon train that had gone through Death Valley and lost so many and how a few had made it to Santa Barbara and would be making their way north and what a hard journey they'd had. The train was likely the ill-fated Jayhawkers.
Then he told of a visit by one man from Santa Barbara where they talked congenially about Mormonism. I can't remember his name without digging out the letters but he was one of the important prophets, maybe the twelve, in any case was the founder or first mayor of Santa Barbara (there was a large Mormon settlement there).
He tells of having to shoot a beef to eat, his family, how hard it was to keep his children in shoes, a fascinating Catholic funeral for a little Native American child who had died.
On one of his trips to and from home to CA, they went by steamboat from New Orleans. He writes some very bigoted comments about black people.
So he died and was buried in CA and a memorial was put up in a cemetery that my family shared with the Cook family in Knox County. The cemetery page with the photos I can't find but his death is listed for West Truro Cemetery aka Cook Cemetery, stone says died in California, Cook, David S. born December 13, 1821, died April 4, 1886.
I believe Emma Smith, the widow, married a tavern keeper in Nauvoo or a town close by and didn't accompany Brigham Young to SLC.
I've also visited SLC, don't remember anything interesting to report, heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, admired the clean, wide streets, and was disappointed we couldn't go into the temple. That's when I was about 14. So I guess we did talk a little more about Mormons again. My dad never said anything bad about them and neither did my mother. It would be fun to have asked them later but I never thought of it.