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Visitors Guide to
Kinderhook
Pike County, Illinois |
Kinderhook is located along the Great River Road in the Mississippi
River bottomlands of northwestern Pike County. The town was founded in
1836 by Chester Churchill and Bridge Whitten and named after Kinderhook,
NY from where the two men had come from. Kinderhook is a Dutch term
meaning "children's corner." Both Churchill and Whitten had been
longtime settlers in the area and it is believed that Churchill donated
the land on which the town was built. Most of the town lies on the hill
but the business section has always been at the foot of the hill along
Quincy Street. The first settler in the town was Peter Harper and the
first store was operated by Churchill.
In
1843 a set of six small, bell-shaped pieces of brass with strange
engravings “discovered” in 1843 in an Indian mound near Kinderhook. The
plates, known as the Kinderhook Plates, were designed to appear ancient,
but were in fact a forgery created by three men (Bridge Whitten, Robert
Wiley, and Wilburn Fugate) in Kinderhook who were hoping to trick the
Latter Day Saints, whose headquarters at the time was in nearby Nauvoo.
According to Latter Day Saint belief, the Book of Mormon was originally
translated from a record engraved on Golden Plates by the ancient
inhabitants of the Americas. The hoax was a success as the plates were
brought Joseph Smith, leader of the Latter Day Saints, who recorded in
his journal on May 1, 1843, he says: "I have translated a portion of
them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they
were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh,
king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven
and earth." In 1879 Fugate made the claim that the plates were a hoax,
although not much was made of this claim as the Mormons had since moved
to Utah and many Mormons had long believed in the validity of the
plates. In 1920 the Chicago Historical Society acquired what appeared to
be one of the original Kinderhook plates and subjected it to a number of
nondestructive tests, with inconclusive results. In 1980 Northwestern
University was given permission to conduct s series of destructive tests
and concluded that the plate was one of the Kinderhook six and that it
was of nineteenth-century manufacture. It is generally accepted now that
the Kinderhook plates weren’t anything more than a frontier hoax.
In
1993 it was chosen as one of the twelve most unique post offices in the
United States. Local physician, Dr. P.H. Dechow, incorporated some of
his rock collection in the exterior walls. You will be able to identify
other objects such as Indian artifacts, antiques jugs, Model T caps, old
playing marbles, and rattlesnake rattles.
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