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SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon Tabernacle Choir this month will honor a little-known group that played an important part in church history — pioneers who harvested lumber from Wisconsin to build the city of Nauvoo, Ill.
The choir's website reports the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will stop in Black River Falls, Wis., on June 19.
Choir members donated the money for a commemorative historical marker, in honor of the logging pioneers. It will be placed in Trail of Honor Park, near the mills where Latter-day Saints cut lumber used to construct the original Nauvoo Temple and other buildings in that town more than a century ago.
The town of Nauvoo plays a significant role in church history. Between 1839 and 1846, Nauvoo grew from a small town to a metropolitan city. Latter-day Saints built more than 2,500 homes and many businesses there. But lumber was scarce in Nauvoo, so the church built mills in Wisconsin where lumber was more readily available.
The website reports church members sent to Wisconsin to log harvested more than one-and-a-half million board feet of lumber, then floated it down the Black River to Nauvoo 400 miles away. Over the course of four years, about 200 church members worked in four different mills, under harsh conditions, to supply the lumber.
"The sacrifices of these logging pioneers are not well known, even among church members," choir president Ron Jarrett said. "We wanted to honor these unsung heroes by singing their praises."
Read more about it at mormontabernaclechoir.org.
