The John D. Lee Home Site
The John D. Lee home was built on the west side of Hyde between Hotchkiss and Munson streets. Nonextant two-story brick home built after the Federal style with Dutch influence on the end walls.
Historical Background
John D. Lee was born on 6 September 1812 at Kaskaskia, Randolph County, Illinois. He married Agatha A. Woolsey on 23 July 1833 in Illinois. Lee was baptized on 17 June 1837. In Nauvoo he was an agent for the Nauvoo Neighbor. He was also the Nauvoo wharf master, a major in the Nauvoo Legion, general clerk and recorder for the Seventies Priesthood Quorum, and served as the clerk for the Temple Committee. He was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on 11 December 1845.
Lee reluctantly abandoned his home in Nauvoo:
"My large house, costing me $8000 . . . I was offered $800 for. My fanaticism would not allow me to take that for it. I locked it up, selling only one stove out of it, for which I received eighty years of cloth. The building with its twenty-seven rooms, I turned over to the committee, to be sold to help the poor away. The committee informed afterwards that they wold the house for $12.50."