JosephSmith.ca

The Nauvoo Road in Canada 
Re: John Borrowman

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I think members of the Church may be interested to know that according to The History of Lambton County and The Great Canadian Mission, an early settlement of Mormons, living in what was then called Gardner’s Mills and what is now called Alvinston, constructed a roadway through dense brush. They called the roadway the Nauvoo Road. The purpose for building the road was to connect up to the main road in order to travel to Nauvoo by way of Sarnia, Ontario, and Port Huron, Michigan. The road building took place in 1846. A monument now stands at the place, erected by members of the Church in Ontario and the Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmarks Association. The Gardner family had joined the Church as a result of the missionary efforts of John Borrowman, who served as a missionary in this area in the early 1840s. They decided to move when the persecutions of the day befell them. This is some of the early history of the Church in Canada. Many Saints may not know that the gospel was taught in Canada as early as the winter of 1829–30, when Oliver Cowdery and Hiram Page traveled to Toronto in an attempt to raise funds for the publishing of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith himself established a branch of the Church in Eastern Canada, and many of the early leaders carried out missionary work in the area. Gordon P. Hillman Sarnia, Ontario, Canada Note from Blaine Borrowman: While we were in Ontario on a genealogy-seeking trip, Tom Borrowman, a relative living in London, Ontario, stated the the so-called Nauvoo Road has since become a Canadian national highway.