Church History Sites 1: John Johnson Farm

Our Spring Break was in March.  It's different here.  Instead of a full week off Monday-Friday, they schedule it around Good Friday.  So spring break is actually called Easter Break and we're off Thursday, Friday and then Monday...and that's it!

We decided to go explore some church history sites.  Kirtland is only 3.5 hours from our home...yay!  On our first day we drove straight to the John Johnson Farm in Hiram, OH.
Emma and Joseph and their family lived here in 1831-1832.  Some really amazing and sacred things happened in this home.  The 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants was received here.

This is the room that Joseph and Emma slept in.  One night they were sleeping in a bed like this one with their twin babies who were sick.  Emma was on the bed with one baby and Joseph was on the trundle with the other baby when I mob broke in and dragged him out.  They stripped his clothes off, beat him, and tarred and feathered him.  The mob also dragged Sidney Rigdon out of his home across the street and when Joseph saw him he thought he was dead because he had been knocked unconscious.  When Joseph made it back home, Emma screamed and fainted at the first sight of him.  She thought the tar covering his body was blood.  They worked all night scraping the tar off of Joseph's battered body... 
... Early the very next day, Joseph stood on the front porch and preached to a congregation like nothing had happened.  A few days later, one of the twins died from exposure to the cold the night of the mobbing. 

Here we are on the steps that the prophet often preached from:

After touring the John Johnson Farm we drove to the home that Eliza and Lorenzo Snow were born and raised in.  It is privately owned so I just snapped a few pictures.

 The Snow home is so charming!

There's a very old cemetery next door.  I was excited to find "Lydia".  She was Lorenzo and Eliza's aunt. 

After our explorations in Hiram we drove north, hoping to find Lake Erie....  It would have been hard to miss!  We walked along part of the shore, but there were dead fish everywhere!  Ewwww!  So we didn't stay long, and we were cold.