The history of Nauvoo, Illinois, starts with the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes who frequented the area, on a bend of the Mississippi River in Hancock County, some 53 miles (85 km) north of today's Quincy.

They called the area "Quashquema", in honor of the Native American chief who headed a Sauk and Fox settlement numbering nearly 500 lodges.

In late 1839, arriving Mormons bought the small town of Commerce, and in April 1840 it was renamed "Nauvoo" (a Hebrew word meaning "they are beautiful") by Joseph Smith, the leader and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement.

[3] Nauvoo is an important tourist destination for Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and others who come to see its restored historic buildings and visitor centers.

The hopes of commercial success, based on the townsite being beside a necessary portage trail past seasonal rapids, were dashed by the fact that the site and surrounding lands were also most of the time a malarial swamp.

Church member Israel Barlow fled Missouri and entered Illinois further north than the main group of Latter-day Saints.

Church leaders purchased this land as well as the mostly vacant Commerce plat in 1839, and Latter Day Saints began to settle the area immediately.

Elements of Joseph Smith's generalized city plan, known as the "plat of Zion" (first introduced in 1833) were used in the street layout and lot allotments in Nauvoo.

The community was characterized by wood frame homes with outbuildings, gardens, orchards and grazing plots on large lots laid out on an orderly grid system.

In the spring of 1840, John C. Bennett, the Quarter Master General of the Illinois State Militia, converted to Mormonism and became Joseph Smith's friend and confidant.

[15] After passing both houses of the Illinois Legislature, Governor Thomas Carlin signed the Nauvoo City Charter on December 16, 1840.

[17] The Latter Day Saints published two newspapers in the city, the religious and church-owned Times and Seasons and the secular and independently owned Wasp (later replaced by the Nauvoo Neighbor).

The church's "Traveling High Council" (or Quorum of the Twelve) led by President Brigham Young oversaw its missionary activities.

Young proved more loyal than Bennett, helping Smith promote the teachings of the Church and the practice of plural marriage with greater discretion.

An extension of the Mormon belief of an imminent millennium, this council was meant to be a political organization which could immediately fill the roles of purely secular governments which would be destroyed at Christ's Second Coming.

He wrote, "I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely, for a Theodemocracy, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness.

This power base, plus the fact that Mormons benefited from collective group efforts as opposed to the more isolated and independent non-Mormon farmer, caused many non-LDS in the nearby areas to become suspicious and jealous.

While awaiting trial in Carthage, the county seat, under assurance of safety from Illinois governor Ford, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were assassinated when a vigilante mob attacked the jail.

During our stay in the county the anti-Mormons thronged into the camp and conversed freely with the men, who were fast infected with their prejudices, and it was impossible to get any of the officers to aid in expelling them.

[25]Vigilante bands continued to roam the county, forcing Latter Day Saints in outlying areas to abandon their homes and gather in Nauvoo for protection.

These were made up of Mormon men and boys who "whistled" while "whittling" with large knives held close to any suspicious strangers who entered Nauvoo.

About a week later, on September 16, Daniel H. Wells and the Mormon leadership of Nauvoo surrendered to the mob and arranged for their people's evacuation from the town and expulsion across the Mississippi River into the Iowa Territory.

[29] 159 years later, on April 1, 2004, the Illinois House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution of regret for the forced expulsion of the Mormons from Nauvoo in 1846.

[30] Emma Hale Smith, Joseph's widow, continued to live in Nauvoo with her family after the departure of the majority of the Latter Day Saints.

In 1860, their son, Joseph Smith III, said he received a revelation to take his place as Prophet/President of a group known as the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints".

In his final years, members of the church began to move to Independence, Missouri, which Smith's father had designated as the "center place" of the "City of Zion".

In 1849, Icarians moved to the Nauvoo area to implement a utopian socialist commune based on the ideals of French philosopher Étienne Cabet.

Dissension over legal matters and the death of Cabet in 1856 caused some members to leave this parent colony and move on to other Icarian locations in East St. Louis, Illinois, and Iowa and California.

[1] Notable residents from this era include the Swiss memoirist Heinrich Lienhard, who lived for many years in the former home of the Mormon leader Heber C.

[2] The early Catholic history of Nauvoo traces to missionary priests traveling the Mississippi River, who stopped in this area in 1820.