Myth 8 | Moroni Once Had Wings

Myth 8 | Moroni Once Had Wings

The Nauvoo Temple was destroyed in 1848. It is not known for certain what happened to the angel that once sat upon its spire. While there have been stories and rumors about the fate of this angel, none of them have been proven to this date.

One particularly prevalent rumor still circulates about the Nauvoo Angel. The story is that it had been purchased by the Salem Evangelical Reformed Church at Sycamore and Orchard Streets in Cincinnati Ohio in 1867. This congregation held a tradition that they had purchased the Nauvoo Angel. After it was blown off the steeple in 1968, they gave it to Nauvoo Restoration Inc. A thorough investigation concluded it was not the Nauvoo weather vane. Clues to this include it having been more cherubic in its features, having wings, and not holding a book.^[1]“The Mystery of the Nauvoo Angel!” zettasaprons.blogspot.con, 29 May 2013

This is one likely source of the myth that at least one Angel Moroni Statue had wings, as the weathervane from the Cincinnati church had them. However, this weathervane had never been on the Nauvoo temple, so this source would prove the myth not true.

Another potential source for this myth involves popular trends at the time that Cyrus Dallin sculpted and cast the Angel Moroni Statue. Photos available through the Church History Library of the Foundry where the statue was cast indicate that an angel with a trumpet was not a wholly original creation by Cyrus Dallin. One of the photos from that set shows a wingless figure holding a trumpet behind some workers at the foundry assembling a statue from multiple casts. The statue looks more similar to the Statues that Karl Quilter would eventually create than to the Dallin statue, but show that the idea of a statue in the form of a Herald was not exactly new.

Another photo shows an array of statues cast by the foundry. In the photo two figures, posed similar to the Dallin Moroni stand holding trumpets. In this photo, each of the angel figures features wings. It is possible that individuals having seen the photos in passing, and knowing them to connected to the creation of an Angel Moroni, mistook them for the statue in question. However, as these photos are of other statues from the same foundry, and the set contains photos of the Salt Lake Moroni, it is easy to identify that these are not intended for use on the temple, and therefore are also indicative of this myth not being true.

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