50 years of Church in Nauvoo area
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BURLINGTON, Iowa — On the verge of the open house for the Nauvoo Illinois Temple, April marks the 50th anniversary of what amounts to the re-establishment of the Church in the Nauvoo area since the 1846 exodus.
Steven Garrison of the Burlington (Iowa) Ward, Nauvoo Illinois Stake, said his father, David Garrison, and four family members were baptized in Bonaparte, Iowa, on April 27, 1952. He said the family group, which included his mother, Grace; father, James; and two brothers, Ray and Roy, were the first convert baptisms in the region since the Latter-day Saints left more than a century earlier.
"While the Garrison family lived in Burlington, Iowa, the baptisms took place in Bonaparte because there was no place in or around Burlington that would allow the missionaries to perform the baptisms," Brother Garrison said. The closest meetinghouse was in Des Moines, where the family attended services, but that was a four-hour drive away. Missionaries sought and were refused permission to perform the baptisms in Nauvoo in the Mississippi River. Finally a Church member who had recently moved to Bonaparte, just an hour away from Burlington, offered to let the baptisms be performed in a stream on his land.
That Sunday, May 4, the first Church services were held in the living room of the Garrison home, the nucleus of what would become today's Nauvoo Illinois Stake.
"Soon a branch was formed in Burlington, and now a ward thrives in that town," Brother Garrison said.
"All of this missionary activity was momentous not only for its newfound success, but because of the large amount of time that had passed since the gospel was first preached to the inhabitants of Burlington while the saints were still in Nauvoo.
In Doctrine and Covenants 124:88, the Lord sends missionaries to Burlington as well as Carthage, Warsaw and Madison (now called Fort Madison).
— R. Scott Lloyd
