Jesse N. Smith Home Museum in Parowan

On our way home from California, we stopped in Parowan to see the Jesse N. Smith Home Museum. This was the first house he built when he was just 18 shortly after he got married. He is especially impressive in the amount of responsibility he took on at a young age.

In visiting the house, I was worried about finding someone to let us in. I didn't find someone until we were there but fortunately it worked out. It turns out that one of the challenges with this house is that since the family moved to Snowflake a long time ago, the descendants of Jesse N. Smith don't live in Parowan so there aren't many people to give tours.

But this woman did a great job and we enjoyed seeing the house!

This is the front room of the house where they received visitors. Jesse N. Smith had a lot of visitors because he was the mayor of Parowan for a while as well as being a church leader.

The pictures are of Mary Aikens Smith and her two sons: Jesse N. Smith and Silas Smith.

Weaving rugs was something that they did a lot in that day to keep the floors protected and probably warmer in the winter. This picture shows a typical rug.

This was a couch which could be turned into a bed for visitors.

This was a hole in the corner which led to the basement, usually covered by a trap door. Fortunately there were some better stairs so we didn't have to use these ones.

The room next to the front room was an office-type room but probably also used as a bedroom.

The walls were unplastered adobe for a long time until they were finished with plaster.

The kitchen was added on later (I think). It was behind the front room and the office/bedroom. Perhaps they just used the two front rooms to cook their food until the kitchen was added.

From the kitchen window, you could see the outhouse--a good reminder that they didn't have our modern conveniences.

From the kitchen, we went downstairs to the rough basement. It was used for food storage. Jesse N. Smith dug it himself. It wasn't quite tall enough to stand up in.

After the basement, we went upstairs. They slept up there and kept a loom up there.

A very old sewing machine.

I'm glad we have these opportunities to learn and be reminded of our ancestors' lives and the things they accomplished. We owe them much more than we realize. We enjoyed our tour and I'm glad we went!

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