Mary Audentia Smith Anderson summarizes how Joseph Smith III remembers a bar in the Nauvoo Mansion.
Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, "The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith (1832–1914)," Saints' Herald 82, no. 4 (22 January 1935): 110.
When she returned [to the Nauvoo Mansion] Mother found installed in the keeping-room of the hotel—that is to say the main room where the guests assembled and where they were received upon arrival—a bar, with counter, shelves, bottles, glasses, and other paraphernalia customary for a fully-equipped tavern bar, and Porter Rockwell in charge as tender. She was very much surprised and disturbed over this arrangement, but said nothing for a while. A few hours later, as I met her in the hall between the dining room and the front room, she asked me where Father was. I told her he was in the front room. She asked, "If anyone else there?" Yes," I answered, "quite a number." Then she told me to go and tell him she wished to see him. I obeyed and returned with him to the hall where Mother awaited him. "Joseph," she asked, "What is the meaning of that bar in this house?" He told her of Porter's arrival and that a place was being prepared for him just across the street where he would run a barber shop with a bar in connection, explaining that the bar in the hotel was only a temporary arrangement until the building referred to could be finished and ready for occupancy. There was no excitement or anger in Mother's voice nor in what she said as she replied but there was a distinctness and earnestness I have never forgotten, and which had its effect upon Father as well. "How does it look," she asked, "for the spiritual head of a religious body to be keeping a hotel in which is a room fitted out as a liquor-selling establishment?" He reminded her that all taverns had their bars at which liquor was sold or dispensed—which was true at that day—and again urged that it was only for a time and was being done for Porter's benefit, explaining that since Porter had been compelled to leave his own home and had, in a measure, been made a scapegoat for charges that had been made against the two of them, he felt obligated to help him. Mother's reply came emphatically clear, though uttered quietly: "Well, Joseph, the furniture and other goods I have purchased for the house will come, and you have some other person look after things here. As for me, I will take my children and go across to the old house and stay there, for I will not have them raised up under such conditions as this arrangement imposes upon us, nor have them mingle with the kind of men who frequent such a place. You are at liberty to make your choice; either that bar goes out of the house, or we will!" It did not take Father long to make the choice, for he replied immediately, "Very well, Emma: I will have it removed at once"—and he did.