Nauvoo'

Nauvoo' (from Heb. nāwār, 'to be beautiful'), a village of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, 14 miles above Keokuk. It was built by the Mormons (q.v.) in 1840, and in a few months contained a population of 15,000. Its principal feature was a great temple of white limestone (1841-45); but it had also mills and factories, and the beginnings of a university, and was for a few years a prosperous and happy town. After the expulsion of the Mormons in 1846, the temple was half destroyed by fire in 1848, and further ruined by a tornado in 1850. The town was for a time occupied by French Socialists, and has now only 1200 inhabitants.—The Nauvoo Legion was a Mormon military organisation, embracing all the males between the ages of sixteen and fifty, founded here in 1840, and reorganised in Utah in 1857. In 1870, when it mustered for the last time, it numbered about 13,000 men.