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William Huntington while a young man lived with the Prophet Joseph Smith and was a great favorite of the prophet. He took suddenly and violently ill while the prophet was away from home. The Prophet Joseph’s wife Emma sent word for him to hasten home, for William was lying at the point of death. When the prophet reached home his wife met him at the gate and said, “Joseph you are too late. William has been dead for five minutes.”
The prophet rushed into the house, placed his hands upon the dead man’s head, and commanded the spirit to return to his body that he again become a living soul. No sooner had the prophet removed his hands from his head, than he showed signs of life. The prophet raised him up in bed and ask his wife Emma to bring a bowl of bread and milk.
He fed him part of it and then told William to feed himself, which he did. He had been unable to take any nourishment for several days. The prophet asked for the sick man’s clothes, he dressed him, and helped him out on the floor and over to a chair. He then placed his hands upon William’s head and told him he would live to be an old man. He would go the valleys of the mountains and pain would never again enter his body in any way, shape, or form, and when he died it would be suddenly.
This prophecy and promise was fulfilled to the very letter. LeGrand knew this man very well in Springville, Utah. He was postmaster there and LeGrand, then just a boy would go for the mail and talk to him almost every day.
The night Brother Huntington died, he went to bed feeling fine, along about three o’clock his wife found him cold in death. He had died without a struggle. While he was alive he bore his testimony many times that he had never felt any pain since the prophet administered to him.
William was also the one that helped prepare the body of the prophet and also helped bury him.
Here is another account of this incident.
Note: Retyped by Monica Durfee Anderson, Granddaughter, 2013
