Posted by:
Amyjo
(
)
Date: June 14, 2016 06:03PM
The "real church" is right across the street and kitty corner to this one. This one is closed except for special events (from what I could read on its historic registry marker,) and open during the summer months for tours.
"The Bear Lake Stake Tabernacle, situated on main street in Paris, Idaho, is a Romanesque red sandstone meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints designed by Joseph Don Carlos Young. The tabernacle was built between 1884 and 1889 by Mormon pioneers of Bear Lake Valley who used horse and ox teams to haul rock quarried from Indian Creek Canyon nearly 18 miles away.[2] It cost $50,000 to build and seats around 2000 people. The tabernacle was dedicated September 15, 1889 by LDS Church president Wilford Woodruff. In 1972 the tabernacle was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The tabernacle was most recently refurbished in 2004-2005 and continues to operate as a meeting place for the Bear Lake Stake congregations and community."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Lake_Stake_TabernacleMy direct ancestors were there during the years it was being built. Great granddad died in 1889, the year its construction was completed. He went to a music practice at church on a Saturday night he had organized, so the choir could sing the following day.
That Sunday he came home not feeling well, and he was dead by the following Friday of some mysterious illness that claimed his life.
I wonder if it might've been poisoning? There was some Mormon woman trying to get him to marry her as a second, and polygamous wife. Until my great grandmother put her foot down, and told that woman to stay away from him, and told him she wouldn't allow it. This woman came by every night asking my great grandpa to walk her home in the dark (who was courting whom there?) He told my great grandma who was a tiny petite little woman who'd never raised her voice before, that now he knew she loved him most of all. And he was faithful to only her.
And then there was a greedy bug eyed lawyer who no sooner than great grandpa had died, swindled my great granny out of her land that he'd left as her estate. Leaving her a young widow with three little children, bereft and penniless.
So, did the other woman desirous of having an intra-marital affair succeed in poisoning him at the church event that weekend after he told her to eff off? Or a greedy lawyer hell bent on stealing his Bear Lake property out from under his dead body?
That's a mystery only the gods know the real answer to. All of them are long gone.
Great granddad survived four years of the Civil War. He survived Indian ambushes in the Great Basin of Wyoming. He helped to bury the dead at Custer's Last Stand in 1878.
He could not survive a mere seven years of Mormonism. He didn't join the LDS church until after he'd met and married my ggrandmother.
Such are the mysteries of life. :/
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2016 02:02PM by Amyjo.