David's personal appearance—Healing of Abraham O. Smoot—Margaret Tittle healed—Prophecy at Paris, Tennessee—Journey to Far West—Visits Kirtland during the great apostasy—Chosen to Presidency in Missouri—Revelation—Expresses a wish to die as a martyr.

Probably the description of David's personal appearance with which the most of those who knew him in life agree, is that given by President Abraham O. Smoot, who says he was about six feet one inch in height, stoutly built, though not fleshy, and of a dark complexion, with piercing black eyes. As to disposition, President Smoot describes him as jovial, qualifying his expression, however, with the closing remark:

"His jokes, though, were pretty solid."

At one time while traveling with David, Abraham O. Smoot, then little more than a boy, became so sick he could sit on his horse no longer. Stopping at the house of an atheist, Brother Smoot was put to bed, and David assisted their hostess to prepare the sick man some warm drinks.

His companion receiving no relief, David obtained permission to "attend prayers," and kneeling down by the bedside he laid his hands upon the sick man's head and asked the Lord to heal him.

"Every bit of pain left me," said Brother Smoot, in relating the incident, "in the twinkling of an eye."

It was just following this remark that President Smoot said:

"I don't recollect that he ever failed in his importuning to heal the sick."

Once, when David and Wilford Woodruff were traveling together, they were called to the bedside of a sick woman, Margaret Tittle, who lay at the point of death. Preaching the Gospel to her, David received a promise that if healed she would be baptized. After being administered to by the servants of the Lord, she was restored to perfect health instantly, when she refused baptism.

They told her she was acting a dangerous part and would again be attacked if she did not repent. Returning that way in a few days, they found her very low again, when she again promised, but this time with more sincerity, for after being healed the second time, she was led into the water and baptized, by Wilford Woodruff.

On August 20th, David preached at the house of Randolph Alexander, and after meeting baptized him and his wife.

The spirit of mobocracy seemed always to have aroused in David all the resentment of which he was capable. At one time while holding a meeting in Pads, Tennessee, as related by President Woodruff, a mob gathered in the place of meeting with threats of violence. Instead, however, of being intimidated by their presence, David denounced their undertaking in the most unmeasured terms and in the spirit of prophecy, though the fulfillment in the Civil War was then more than twenty-five years away, predicted:

"Before you die some of you will see the streets of Paris run with the blood of its own citizens."

How fearfully this prophecy was fulfilled in the capture of Paris in 1862 by General Morgan, during his famous raid through Kentucky and Tennessee!

Early in September, the seven branches of the Church in Kentucky and Tennessee, representing one hundred and thirty-three members, assembled in conference on Damon's Creek, Calloway County, Kentucky, Thomas B. Marsh, as President of the Twelve Apostles, presiding. On the third day of the conference, David preached on repentance and baptism, and at the close of the meeting, five persons came forward and asked to be baptized.

Directly after conference, David with his wife took leave of the Saints and his fellow laborers, and returned in safety with Thomas B. Marsh and companion, Elisha H. Groves, to Missouri.

In leaving the field of his labors of the past six months, in company with Elisha H. Groves, who had first conferred upon him authority to enter the missionary field, it was but natural that David should retrospectively contemplate the work to which his life had been so wholly given over since that lonely ride through the woods from Michigan to Indiana. His first disappointing missionary labors among his friends and acquaintances in Michigan, when he expected all of them to rejoice with him in the great light newly burst upon the world; the first visit to the Prophet Joseph, followed by the two successive missions in the East; his winter's journey with William D. Pratt; his labors in Missouri and in the South; his ordination to the Apostleship with the wonderful feast of blessings and endowments that followed; the return to the South, just terminated all these reflections crowded upon him with all their accompanying memories of toil and privation, with all the accompanying memories of the powers and blessings the Lord had bestowed upon him; and there was no room in his soul for anything but gratitude. Not only so, but there was a more settled resolution to persevere to the end; and it was probably on this journey back to Missouri that in David's mind the nature of that end was predetermined.

Upon his return to Missouri, after an absence of two years, David found not a few marks of progress in the condition of the Saints. A new town had been laid out called Far West, into which the people were gathering from every quarter. Efforts were being made to purchase all the land in the newly created County of Caldwell, and it was to gather means for this purpose that President Thomas B. Marsh had made his recent visit into Kentucky.

Locating on a single lot in the northwest part of town given him by the Saints, David soon had a plain log house erected, and from that time he devoted himself entirely to the welfare of the Church. His zeal in spreading the truth abroad, was not surpassed by that manifested in its defense at home.

Early in the spring of 1837, David preferred charges before the High Council in Zion against Lyman Wight for teaching false doctrine. At the trial in Far West on April 24th the charges were sustained, the proper acknowledgements soon after accepted by the Saints and harmony restored. The incident illustrates the disinterestedness and manliness of David's character, for his action in this matter seems only to have drawn closer the ties of confidence and friendship existing between himself and his commanding officer in the militia, Colonel Lyman Wight.

In June, in company with Thomas B. Marsh and William D. Pratt, David, responding to a call for a meeting of the Twelve, took a mission through the intervening States to Kirtland, where they arrived in the midst of the great apostasy. Here was need of all the courage he could command, for it was a time to test the integrity of the strongest.

Deception and fraud and darkness had overcome his close friend and brother-in-law, Warren Parrish, who tried by every means in his power to turn David himself against the Prophet; and the downfall of his brethren at that time was one of the greatest sorrows of David's life. Not long after the conference at Kirtland in September, 1837, David returned to Far West.

The spirit of the apostasy soon spreading into Missouri, it was found necessary to displace the three Presidents, David Whitmer, John Whitmer and W. W. Phelps. In consequence, Thomas B. Marsh and David W. Patten were, on February 10th, sustained as temporary Presidents of the Church in Missouri, pending the arrival of the Prophet Joseph Smith from Kirtland. At the coming of the Prophet, March 14th, 1838, a conference was called, at which three weeks later, Thomas B. Marsh was chosen President in Missouri, and David W. Patten and Brigham Young his assistants.

Shortly after, on April 17, 1838, the following revelation was received through the Prophet Joseph Smith:

"1. Verily thus said the Lord, it is wisdom in my servant David W. Patten, that he settle up all his business as soon as he possibly can, and make a disposition of his merchandise, that he may perform a mission unto me next spring, in company with others, even Twelve, including himself, to testify of my name, and bear glad tidings unto the world.

"2. For verily thus saith the Lord, that inasmuch as there are those among you who deny my name, others shall be planted in their stead, and receive bishopric. Amen."—Doc. and Cov. Sec. 114.

It was probably this revelation that occasioned a conversation between the Prophet and David, reported by Wilford Woodruff.

David made known to the Prophet that he had asked the Lord to let him die the death of a martyr, at which the Prophet, greatly moved, expressed extreme sorrow, "for," said he to David, "when a man of your faith asks the Lord for anything, he generally gets it."