A well and a window . . .

August 15, 2017

We had a young family from Virginia come for a tour today. They are such a cute family with all daughters and just one son. The girls were all very well-behaved and polite, and the son was really a character, to put it nicely. He wanted to see in and behind everything. We begin the tour at the Knight home outside, where we welcome the guests at the log fence and talk to them about the boundaries of the original Knight farm. We then proceed to the well and talk about it. This family's son, named Jared, was so excited about the well, and he asked if he could look inside which is something that we always have the guests do. Jared was hanging head first over the side of the well studying every aspect of it and excitedly explaining how it is meant to be climbed down inside of, and he was asking his parents if he could go down into it. We could tell right from the beginning of the tour that Jared was going to make things interesting. The story that we tell at the well is as follows:  "The well was hand dug by Joseph Knight Sr. and his sons [around 1815], and was the sole source of water to the home until September of 2013. The original well was dug to a depth of 40 feet, and it wasn't until the restoration of the home took place that it became necessary to drill the well to a depth of 120 feet. It's interesting to note that the local well master acclaimed the well to be the finest workmanship he has ever seen in his years of inspecting wells in the area (a tribute to Father Knight and sons)." All of this information was completely lost on Jared as we were sharing it at the beginning of our tour. All he could think about was being given permission to climb down inside the well so he could climb out and scare somebody on Halloween, haha!

The well at the Knight home.

Jared also wanted to touch everything he saw inside the home, much to the anxiety of his mother. All of the furnishings, dishes, accessories, etc in the home are original 1800's pieces, not replicas, so we try to discourage anyone from handling anything. I think pretty much everything in the home got handled or touched by Jared though, since he was quite determined and very quick. We just laughed and tried to put his anxious mother at ease. It really was kind of funny. When we get to the fireplace in the kitchen of the home with a tour, we tell the following story:  "During the 2012 restoration of the home "Richard," his wife, and sister-in-law, from the greater Salt Lake City area, showed up one afternoon on a long awaited self-guided tour of Church history sites. After spending time here and at the Josiah Stowell home, they left. By 7:00 the next morning they were back. Richard explained that he had been up much of the night wrestling with the quandary as to whether or not to proceed with their tour as planned, or follow what had surely been a spiritual epiphany suggesting he stay and work on the home. After much discussion concerning his particular skill set, he divulged that he was, as a hobbyist, an old time blacksmith. When asked if he would consider crafting a swing-arm and iron set for the fireplace, then ship to us when completed, he enthusiastically agreed. He did one better. In the fall of 2012, he and his nephew showed up with completed iron works ready for installation. They then stayed for several days and assisted in some emergency carpentry work on the house. He related that as he was getting ready to weld the individual pieces of the swing-arm together he had a prompting that he was to hand forge the metal rather than weld it. That is, the firing of the individual pieces of metal to as hot a temperature as possible with a hand forge, then beating the pieces of metal together with a sledge, then repeating the process as many times as was necessary to meld the metal into one piece. As a side note, Richard took extensive measurements and photos of the same pieces of iron works in the fireplaces at the Whitmer cabin in Fayette from which to model the swing-arm and iron set for the Knight home."

The swing-arm and iron works in the Knight fireplace.
(Not a very good picture of it)

When we enter the pantry of the home with a tour, we point out the window at the back of the pantry and tell the following story: "This is a very special window for two reasons. When the room was gutted down to the posts and beams, it was discovered that this particular window, covered for decades with sheetrock on the inside and vinyl siding on the outside, was indeed one of the original windows. It was a double sash window, meaning the upper pane, when the brass stops were pulled, slide halfway down. Likewise the lower pane would slide halfway up. The glass is sagged on several of the panes. It was discovered that the window frame was badly deteriorated and needed some serious attention. It was taken from the original casing whereby the casing was rebuilt, as well as some additional work done on the window frame. In the words of the craftsman, this happened, 'When I took the window from the wall, it was a perfect rectangle. After making the necessary repairs, I attempted to put it back into its new frame, but it became jammed. The more I worked with it, the more jammed it became until it looked more like a trapezoid than a rectangle. For fear of breaking the glass, I took it out of the frame and laid it on the floor where it teetered on two opposing corners, out of square, out of plumb, and out of balance. I thought that by using the wide blade chisel I had on the workbench behind me I could probably fix it. As I turned to get the chisel I heard a noise. Since I was alone in the house at the time, this startled me. I turned back to see a perfectly rectangle window, with square corners, lying flat upon the floor. In that instant I was overcome with the knowledge that someone who cared was watching over us and over the entire restoration [of the Knight home].'"

The original window with the miraculous story.

After we finished the tour at the Knight home, we took our cute family to the Stowell home and proceeded with our tour. There is a replica of the gold plates on a table in the parlor of that home complete with a "sealed portion." We had never thought to see if the plates above the sealed portion opened, but our new friend Jared did, since he pretty much had to touch and see inside of everything. He discovered that there is a mini copy of the Book of Mormon down inside the sealed portion of the plates, much to our surprise. We all laughed because Jared was talking a mile a minute as he moved from point of interest to point of interest, discovering things that we had not realized in our several days of being here. After we completed our tour at the Stowell home, this family had reservations to canoe down the Susquehanna. We were really hoping as the family left us that Jared could manage to stay in the canoe throughout the duration of their canoe ride, and that we did not hear about him on the evening news.

The replica of the gold plates with the secret compartment in the sealed portion.

We are headed to the Palmyra area tomorrow to do a session at the Palmyra Temple and see some things in that area. It has been over 20 years since we last visited Palmyra and there was no temple there at that time, so we are looking forward to our day trip. Brother Sherman from the Greene Branch is going to cover for us at the Knight and Stowell homes tomorrow so we can make this trip.