A Visit to Fairport Harbor

A Visit to Fairport Harbor

We took an afternoon to visit Fairport Harbor and see the “Mormon Rock” (See picture below). Fairport Harbor has a special place in the history of the saints coming to Kirtland. Located twelve miles northeast of Kirtland on Lake Erie, this harbor was the landing point for many of the saints. There is a lighthouse that guided the ships safely into the harbor and today there is also a nautical museum with lots of interesting maritime items.

All three of the branches in upstate New York came through Fairport Harbor. Lucy Mack Smith (Joseph Smith’s mother) led a group of Saints from Fayette, New York to Kirtland. When they arrived in Buffalo, New York by way of the Erie Canal, the ship they were going to take to cross Lake Erie was frozen in the ice and could not sail. She led them aboard the ship and told them:

“If you will, all of you raise your desires to heaven, that the ice may be broken up, and we be set at liberty as sure as the Lord lives, it will be done.” At that instant a noise was heard, like bursting thunder. The captain cried, “Every man to his post.” The ice parted, leaving barely a passage for the boat, and so narrow that as the boat passed through, the buckets of the waterwheel were torn off with a crash, which, joined to the word of command from the captain, the horse answering of the sailors, the noise of the ice, and the cries and confusion of the spectators, presented a scene truly terrible. We had barely passed through the avenue when the ice closed together again, and the Colesville brethren were left in Buffalo, unable to follow us.

As we were leaving the harbor, one of the bystanders exclaimed, “There goes the ‘Mormon’ company! That boat is sunk in the water nine inches deeper than ever it was before, and, mark it, she will sink – there is nothing surer.” In fact, they were so sure of it that they went straight to the office and had it published that we were sunk, so that when we arrived at Fairport we read in the papers the news of our own death.