The Society received a request from someone in California asking for a photo of Brigham Young’s house. This person was a direct relative of BY and her (many great) Great Grandmother was born in Port Byron. Quite honestly, for me, there are many other great stories to tell about Port Byron and Mentz, that I really have not taken the time to study BY. I know that he lived here before he became involved with the Mormon faith and that was around 1820-1829. (A newspaper article from 1876 states that BY moved to Port Byron in 1820 and Richard Palmer writes that BY moved to Mendon in 1829. The actual dates seem to bounce around in every article written.) I know that he was a painter and builder, and I know that the Canal Society has a signed receipt from BY for work done at the Milliner Boatyard. In my walks, I had also seen that the house at the corner of Pine and South Street has a plaque that says this is the BY house. So I went and took a photo of the house and then sent it to the relative.
At a Society meeting, Hellen Davies said that the Mormons had told her that that was not the house and that the house off of Seneca Street was the house. So I went for a walk and closely read the historic marker in the triangle.
So did Brigham live in both houses? Seeing as he was the leader of the LDS church and they are the leaders in ancestry research, I checked to see if they had anything. In a website, they point at the yellow house as the house. I asked a friend who had written a book about Brigham and his New York days and he said that he never found out which was which. To confuse matters I found an article that said that the house Brigham lived in was owned by David B Smith and it had been sold to someone who moved it and turned it into a summer kitchen. I sort of let it go at this point.
So when I was researching another topic: “what was the origin of the term Nauvoo?”, I came across more BY info. Many use to refer to the upper section of Pine Street as Nauvoo, so why? Is it because BY lived there? And the Mormons named a town in Illinois Nauvoo. Was this because of Port Byron? Then I stumbled across this from 1907.
So after this, the search was on. Further searching found this article from 1902-1904.
The problem with this article is that it is so full of mistakes that the entire article has to be questioned. However, it does mention the house on Pine and South. It also mentions that parts of “the house” was moved. I have also found mentions that BY lived in Haydenville, Auburn, and perhaps Throopsville.
So we are left with many questions still;
Did BY live on the corner of Pine and South?
Did BY build and live in the yellow house off Seneca Street?
Was this house moved?
What are the actual dates of BY time in Port Byron?
Getting back to Nauvoo, if the written record is to be believed, the use of Nauvoo predates Brigham Young’s arrival in Port Byron, so it may be that he took the name with him as he moved west. Nauvoo means “To be beautiful”, which BY may have found in Illinois, or it may have reminded him of Port Byron.
Just to complete the story, at least for this blog post, here is the plaque that sits at the corner of Pine and Main.
I cautioned my corespondent in California to be careful and asked if she was able to determine what was what, we here would be interested in a answer.