April 2005 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

36
Business Ventures in Kirtland
In 1821 or 1822 Newel Whitney set up his first Kirtland
store in a log cabin on the property of Ann’s uncle Elijah
Smith. The operation continued to grow. Ann recalled of
these earlier years: “He accumulated property faster than
most of his companions and associates. Indeed, he
became proverbial as being lucky in all his undertakings.” 3
Newel’s keen business mind saw the potential of an intersection
in the north part of the township with some of the
heaviest traffic in all of northeastern Ohio. He purchased
Peter French’s apple orchard on the northwest corner of the
intersection on June 1, 1822, where he built what his family
called their “Red Store.” This small 20-by-40-foot store
sharply contrasted with Sidney Gilbert’s large
operation. The two men would consistently
differ in their business approach through the
years: N. K. Whitney built small, while his
friend Sidney Gilbert built large.
The following year Newel bought more
land from Peter French a few hundred yards
southeast of his first piece of property, and
there he built an ashery. Frontier settlers
brought wood to the Whitney ashery for
money or credit. He used the wood to heat
huge cauldrons of water that had been alkalinized
by running it through wood ashes
gathered from farmers’ fields and his own
operations. The remains after the water
boiled away made potash or the more refined pearl ash,
used in making glass, in cleaning wool, and in other industrial
processes. Newel Whitney shipped most of these chemicals
in large barrels to factories in the East or Great Britain.
Within two months of buying the ashery lot, Newel K.
Whitney married Elizabeth Ann Smith. Just west of and
behind the Red Store the Whitneys built a modest home
with a summer kitchen attached on the back. They painted
their small frame house and placed a well-made fence
around each of their properties.
In the fall of 1825 N. K. traveled to New York on a buying
trip in time to bring his goods back on the day the last
segment of the new Erie Canal opened. The opening of
the canal marked the start of a major expansion of Newel
Whitney’s economic activities in Kirtland. He bought a
quarter-acre lot across the road from his home and built
a store a little more than 1,500 square feet that the family
called the “White Store.” When Newel invited Sidney
Gilbert to help him capitalize on this new opportunity,
N. K. Whitney and Company was born.
Religious Involvement
While they busied themselves establishing a family and
business, Newel K. and Ann Whitney were drawn to a
Christian reformation movement in the region. Sidney
Rigdon, a Reformed Baptist minister in neighboring Mentor,
began baptizing a number of Kirtland residents into a movement
that sought to restore primitive Christianity. Followers
of this movement became popularly known as Campbellites.
N. K. and Ann Whitney were drawn to the movement
because its “principles seemed most in
accordance with the Scriptures.” 4
On September 22, 1829, exactly two
years after Joseph Smith received the gold
plates, the Painesville Telegraph, read in
Kirtland, published an article under the
heading “Golden Bible,” announcing that
someone in New York claimed to have seen
the “spirit of the Almighty.” 5 During this
same period Ann and N. K. had a singular
experience while searching out the things
of the Spirit with Sidney Rigdon’s group.
Ann recalled: “It was midnight—as my
husband and I, in our house at Kirtland,
were praying to the Father to be shown the
way, the Spirit rested upon us and a cloud overshadowed
the house. . . . The house passed away from our vision.
We were not conscious of anything but the presence of the
Spirit and the cloud that was over us. . . . A solemn awe
pervaded us. We saw the cloud and felt the Spirit of the
Lord. Then we heard a voice out of the cloud, saying,
‘Prepare to receive the word of the Lord, for it is coming.’
At this we marveled greatly, but from that moment we
knew that the word of the Lord was coming to Kirtland.” 6
In late October 1830 Kirtland’s citizens were again confronted
with news of the “golden bible” when four Latterday
Saint missionaries stopped in neighboring Mentor to
visit Sidney Rigdon, who had been the spiritual leader of
one of the missionaries, Parley P. Pratt. After reading the
Book of Mormon, Sidney Rigdon took the missionaries to
his various congregations, which was probably how they
were first introduced in Kirtland. Their teaching had a
COURTESY OF LDS CHURCH ARCHIVES