David Whitmer

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David Whitmer (1805–1888) was an early adherent of the Latter Day Saint movement who eventually became the most interviewed of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon's Golden Plates.

Contents

[edit] Early life

David Whitmer was born January 7, 1805 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the fourth of nine children of Peter Whitmer, Sr. and Mary Musselman Whitmer. By the 1820s, the Whitmer family had moved to a farm in Fayette, in New York's Finger Lakes area.

[edit] Role in the early Latter Day Saint movement

Whitmer and his family were among the earliest adherents to the Latter Day Saint or Mormon movement. Whitmer first heard of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates in 1828 when he made a business trip to Palmyra,New York, and there talked with his friend Oliver Cowdery, who believed that there "must be some truth to the matter."[1]

Whitmer eventually accepted the story and brought his father's family to join the Smiths in Palmyra. David Whitmer was baptized in June 1829, nearly a year prior to the formal organization of the Latter Day Saint church. Perhaps during that same month, Whitmer said that he, along with Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery saw an angel present the Golden Plates in a vision.[2] Martin Harris reported that he experienced a similar vision with Smith later in the day. Whitmer, Cowdery, and Harris then signed a joint statement (probably written by Smith) declaring their testimony to the reality of the vision. The statement was published in the first edition of the Book of Mormon and has been included in nearly every subsequent edition.

When Smith organized the Latter Day Saint "Church of Christ" (as it was initially called) on April 6, 1830, David was one of six original members. (In his 1838 history, Joseph Smith said the church was organized at the home of David's father, Peter Whitmer, Sr., in Fayette, New York, but in an 1842 letter, Smith said that the church was organized at Manchester, New York.)[3]

David was ordained an elder of the church by June 9, 1830, and he was ordained to the High Priesthood by Oliver Cowdery on October 5, 1831. Soon after the organization of the church, Joseph Smith, Jr. set apart Jackson County, Missouri as a "gathering place" for Latter Day Saints. According to Smith, the area had both once been the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, and would be the "center place" of the City of Zion, the New Jerusalem. As Latter Day Saints began to settle the county, they came into conflict with non-Mormon Missourians, and by 1834 the non-Mormons had expelled them from the county. Whitmer joined an armed militia known as Zion's Camp, which marched from the church's headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio to Clay County, Missouri to aid the refugees in reclaiming their land but which ended in failure. Nevertheless, at its conclusion, on July 7, 1834, Joseph Smith ordained Whitmer to be the President of the church in Missouri and his own successor, should the Prophet "not live to God".

[edit] Excommunicated as a "Dissenter"

Whitmer continued to live in Kirtland and his counselors, William Wines Phelps and John Whitmer (David's brother) presided over the church in Missouri until the summer of 1837. After the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society bank, Smith and his counselor Sidney Rigdon, battered by creditors and hauled before several courts, moved to Far West, Missouri. The ensuing leadership struggle led to the excommunication of the presidency of the church in Missouri — David Whitmer, W.W. Phelps and John Whitmer — as well as other prominent leaders, including Oliver Cowdery.

Whitmer and the other excommunicated Latter Day Saints became known as the "dissenters." The dissenters owned a great deal of land in Caldwell County, Missouri, which they wanted to retain. The church presidency, however, publicly called for their expulsion from the county. A number of Latter Day Saints formed a secret society known as the Danites, whose stated goal was removal of the dissenters. Eighty prominent Mormons signed the so-called Danite Manifesto, which warned the dissenters to "depart or a more fatal calamity shall befall you." Shortly afterward, Whitmer and his family fled to nearby Richmond, Missouri.

Whitmer and the other dissenters complained to the non-Mormons in northwestern Missouri about their forcible expulsion and the loss of their property, and they began to file lawsuits to recover it. raised alarm among non-Mormons and contributed to the 1838 Mormon War. As a result of the conflict most of the Latter Day Saints were expelled from Missouri by early 1839.[4]

Whitmer used his position as one of the Three Witnesses to condemn Joseph Smith's church. "If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon," wrote Whitmer, "if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to 'separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, so it should be done unto them.'"[5]

[edit] President of the Church of Christ (Whitmerite)

Although the main body of the Latter Day Saints eventually relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois, Whitmer continued to live in Richmond, where he operated a livery stable and became a prominent and respected citizen.

After the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, several rival leaders claimed to be Smith's successor, including Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, and James J. Strang. Many of Rigdon's followers became disillusioned by 1847 and some, including apostle William E. McLellin and Benjamin Winchester, remembered Whitmer's 1834 ordination to be Smith's successor. At McLellin's urging, Whitmer exercised his claim to be Smith's successor. Around this time, fellow Book of Mormon witness Oliver Cowdery, began to correspond with Whitmer. After traveling from Ohio to Kanesville (Council Bluffs) Cowdery met in the Kanesville Tabernacle meeting, called to sustain Brigham Young as the new President of the Church; Cowdery bore his testimony with a conviction to the truthfulness of everything that had happened spiritually with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Meeting with Young at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, he requested readmission into the Church, where he was re-baptised into the church. Cowdery then travelled to meet with Whitmer in Richmond, to persuade David Whitmer to move west with him to rejoin the Saints in Utah. While staying with Whitmer, his brother-in-law, however, Cowdery succumbed to consumption and died.

Whitmer continued to live in Richmond and in 1867, he was elected to fill an unexpired term as mayor (1867–1868). In 1876, Whitmer again asserted his claim to be the successor of Joseph Smith and organized a second Church of Christ (Whitmerite). In 1887, he published a pamphlet entitled An Address to All Believers in Christ, in which he affirmed his testimony of the Book of Mormon, but denounced The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah. At the end of his life, Whitmer ordained a nephew to be his successor. David Whitmer died January 25, 1888 in Richmond. The Whitmerite church survived until the 1960s.

[edit] The most interviewed Book of Mormon witness

Because Oliver Cowdery died in 1850 at age 43 and Martin Harris died in 1875 at age 91, David Whitmer was the only survivor of the Three Witnesses for 13 years. At Richmond, Missouri, he sometimes received several inquirers daily asking about his connection to the Book of Mormon, including Mormon missionaries who were traveling from Utah to the eastern United States and Europe. Despite his hostility toward the LDS Church, Whitmer always stood by his claim that he had actually seen the gold plates.[6]

Nevertheless, his testimonies differed from one retelling to another. Recounting the vision to Orson Pratt in 1878, Whitmer claimed to have seen not only the Golden Plates but the "Brass Plates, the plates containing the record of the wickedness of the people of the world....the sword of Laban, the Directors (i.e. the ball which Lehi had) and the Interpreters. I saw them just as plain as I see this bed...."[7] On other occasions, Whitmer's vision of the plates seemed far less corporeal. When asked in 1880 when asked for a description of the angel who showed him the plates, Whitmer replied that the angel "had no appearance or shape." Asked by the interviewer how he then could bear testimony that he had seen and heard an angel, Whitmer replied, "Have you never had impressions?" To which the interviewer responded, "Then you had impressions as the Quaker when the spirit moves, or as a good Methodist in giving a happy experience, a feeling?" "Just so," replied Whitmer.[8] A young Mormon lawyer, James Henry Moyle, who interviewed Whitmer in 1885, asked if there was any possibility that Whitmer had been deceived. "His answer was unequivocal....that he saw the plates and heard the angel with unmistakable clearness." But Moyle went away "not fully satisfied....It was more spiritual than I anticipated."[9] Yet Whitmer ordered his testimony to the Book of Mormon placed on his tombstone.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ David Whitmer interview with Kansas City Journal, June 1, 1881, in Early Mormon Documents 5: 74.
  2. ^ No date nor place for this vision was ever specified.
  3. ^ For evidence regarding these contradictory statements, see Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 109, 586, n.2.
  4. ^ Bushman, 328-55.
  5. ^ Whitmer also denounced the RLDS church, now known as the Community Of Christ): "God commanded me by his voice to stand apart from you."[1]
  6. ^ The earliest known signed testimony of David Whitmer was recorded in a letter to Mr. Mark H. Forscutt of March 2, 1875.[2].
  7. ^ David Whitmer interview with Orson Pratt, September 1878, in EMD, 5: 43.
  8. ^ Whitmer interview with John Murphy, June 1880, in EMD 5: 63.
  9. ^ Moyle diary, June 28, 1885 in EMD 5: 141.
  1. ^ Metcalfe, 1993, p. 177.
  2. ^ Davis, 1981, p. 75 "Dear Sir: My testimony to the world is written concerning the Book of Mormon. And it is the same that I gave at first, and it is the same as shall stand to my latest hour in life, linger with me in death and shine as gospel truth beyond the limits of life, among the tribunals of heaven. And the nations of the earth will have known to[o] late the divine truth written on the pages of that book is the only sorrow of this servant of the Almighty Father."

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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