Caldwell County MO Archives History .....THE MORMON TEMPLE AT FAR WEST 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 3, 2008, 6:19 pm

THE MORMON TEMPLE AT FAR WEST
	Narrator:  Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris  Hamilton, Missouri

     In 1884 and 1885 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris began their married life in a 
little home just south of the old Mormon Temple excavation at Far West.
     Their farm of fifty acres was apparently part of the once populous Mormon 
capital city Far West, for Mr. Morris found several rock foundations on his 
farm.
     The excavation was deeper fifty years ago than now and the rocks were 
larger for Mrs. Morris recalls how sight seers would come over to their home 
to borrow an ax or hammer to knock off a piece of rock as a souvenir.  
Visitors both Mormons and Gentiles were frequent, some getting off the train 
at Cameron and driving over to see the excavation and cornerstone of the 
Mormon Temple which was never finished.  The gaps in the rocks then probably 
were just as they were left when the Gentiles drove the Mormons away 1838 
after the battle of Far West.
     The temple lot belonged then to John Whitmer one of the original 
witnesses of the Mormon revelation.  (Since then it has passed into the 
possession of the Latter Day Saints of the Utah Church)  Just east of the 
temple lot was Jacob Whitmer's home and father east was the home of his father 
John Whitmer.  All these were still adherents of the Latter Day Saints faith.  
Not far off was Mrs. Chris Kerr a daughter who possessed the historic golden 
plates which Joseph Smith dug up.  The Morrises knew the location of the old 
Mormon cemetery but no stones were left 1885.  They knew nothing of the story 
that those monuments had been taken to form the foundation of some house in 
that community--the inscriptions being turned in.
     Interview taken  August 5, 1934.


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