The dynamic history of Warsaw can be traced as far back as 1812 when a primitive U.S. Army fort was established on a plot near where the town\u2019s Main Street descends from the top of a hill to the Mississippi River below. Known as Fort Johnson, it preceded the building of the more substantial Fort Edwards in 1814, which was strategically located on a bluff overlooking where the Des Moines River flowed into the Mississippi at the town of Keokuk, Iowa, named for the Native American chief who had succeeded Black Hawk. Fort Edwards was commanded by future U.S. president Zachary Taylor, and it served as a lookout to keep an eye on the movement of Indians following the Black Hawk Wars in addition to serving as a trading post.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Warsaw\u2019 history is the fact that it was the hometown of John Hay, President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s private secretary during the American Civil War. Hay later served as Secretary of State in the William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt presidencies. But before John rose to prominence in these capacities, his father, Dr. Charles Hay, was a famous pioneer physician who practiced medicine for settlers on the Midwestern frontier where he rode in a horse-drawn buggy for miles upon miles throughout scorching summers and bitter winters. Dr. Hay personified the rural doctor that was depicted in Robert Frost\u2019s famous poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, \u201c…with miles to go before he slept.\u201d Among his patients were the early Mormons who had settled on the sprawling flats between the hilltop village of Nauvoo and the Mississippi. Because of their political strength, they were met with animosity by the original settlers in the region and armed violence spread like a prairie wildfire, sparked to a great degree by the inflammatory writings of Thomas Sharp, the outspoken editor and owner of the Warsaw Signal newspaper. As a result, many of the houses in the Mormons\u2019 Nauvoo settlement were burned down, including their beloved temple, which would lead to their mass exodus from here to the Great Salt Lake in Utah where Brigham Young became the new the leader of the Church, because in 1844 the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, who were being jailed in Carthage over a trumped up charge of treason, were murdered by a Warsaw mob that was led by Sharp and others who secretly met at a home in Warsaw where they conspired to execute the two. So the assassins descended on the jail and the brothers were shot to death. Sharp and four of the co-conspirators eventually stood trial for the heinous killings, in Hancock County, their home turf, and were astonishingly acquitted by what some believed was a stacked jury of their peers. It was a verdict that was characterized by Mormon sympathizers\u2013 which in all fairness to some of the people of Warsaw there were precious few\u2013 to be a blatant and prejudicial miscarriage of justice. The murders and subsequent trial were later written about by Warsaw\u2019s favorite son, John Hay, in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, grabbing national attention at the time. These incidents were historic episodes of dubious distinction that took place in Warsaw\u2019s storied past that couldn\u2019t be ignored. But over the years it\u2019s been glossed over, and the house\/hotel where the men plotted the assassinations of the two brothers fell into disrepair and was nearly demolished, until its new owner, Dana Erskine, decided to return it to its original condition, along with some needed changes, when it was known as the Warsaw House\/Hotel and Fleming Tavern.<\/p>\n
Erskine, a native of southern California, served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a librarian at the Church Family History Center that was located in Los Angeles, Calif.<\/p>\n
Upon completion of her mission in California, she traveled to Portugal with the intention of making it her home, but then she had a change of heart and eventually wound up in a roundabout way in Nauvoo. After deciding that she wanted to stay in the area, she went to a real estate office and fortuitously discovered that the infamous house in Warsaw was for sale. If a buyer was not found soon, she was informed that it could be demolished, which is exactly what happened to the boyhood home of John Hay. Intrigued by the story she was told about the old hotel\u2019s history, Erskine paid it a visit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first stepped in I knew that I was going to purchase it. It just spoke to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In order to make it a hotel again, and to be eligible for some financial assistance from the State of Illinois, Erskine would have to abide by the strict requirements for restoring historically significant properties, which would have interfered with her long-range plans for the property. So, she went forth with the ambitious project anyway, at her own expense, much to her credit, no pun intended.<\/p>\n
The original Victorian home and the brick portion in the back that served as the tavern were both built by Mark Aldrich in 1834. Later on, the Victorian home caved in on itself and was rebuilt by William Piedrit sometime in the 1890s. The upstairs area of the brick section was originally a hotel in the early 1800s, when the Fleming family operated the tavern there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hotel itself consisted of five rooms, three of which were quite small. The other two were roomy enough to accommodate a family and\/or a husband and wife. Later on, in the 1930s, the wall separating the two larger hotel rooms was taken down, and the space was made into one bigger room with a kitchen, and one of the smaller rooms was converted to a bathroom turning the former hotel into an apartment,\u201d Erskine said. \u201cThe layout is fine\u2026 it is the disrepair it had fallen into that\u2019s unacceptable, so it must be repaired prior to me opening it up as a hotel again, and a bed and breakfast facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erskine said that many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who come to visit nearby Nauvoo, also take side trips to Warsaw to see the house. A documentary about it was filmed there not long ago by a company that\u2019s interested in highlighting such places that have played an important role in religious history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hotel and tavern are bringing many outside visitors to Warsaw, which coincides perfectly with the efforts the people of Warsaw have initiated to revitalize their unique and historic Main Street. Illinois\u2019 Historic Preservation Agency has characterized the street as a remarkable example of a flourishing city arrested in its time. I\u2019m happy to say we are becoming a part of its rejuvenation,\u201d Erskine stated.<\/p>\n
The refurbished Warsaw House\/Hotel & Fleming Tavern is slated to open for guests hopefully by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
POSTSCRIPT:<\/p>\n
Before the Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo westward across the Mississippi River around 1844, they had been driven out of Missouri eastward across the Mississippi into Quincy at the onset of winter in 1838.<\/p>\n
In contrast to the harm they faced in the other two places, they were welcome in Quincy with open arms by the generous citizens of that little city who graciously provided the roughly 6,000 penniless, freezing and half-starving Mormons, who were essentially refugees, with jobs, warm clothing, shelter and food. All of this according to Brian J. Stetzman in his fairly recently published book entitled The History of Warsaw, Illinois subtitled Including the Mormon Period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dynamic history of Warsaw can be traced as far back as 1812 when a primitive U.S. Army…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3392,3388,3394,3389,3395,3390,3393,3391,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-4216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-warsaw","8":"tag-brigham-young","9":"tag-hyrum-smith","10":"tag-joseph-smith","11":"tag-latter-day-saint-movement","12":"tag-latter-day-saint-practices","13":"tag-mormonism","14":"tag-restorationism-christianity","15":"tag-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","16":"tag-warsaw"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}