Home -> Surnames -> William Huntington, Jr. -> Children -> Oliver Boardman Huntington Notes -> Patriarchal Blessing
In 1836 there was a "blessing meeting" in the white house opposite the Presbyterian meeting house, on the hill just two miles south of the temple in Kirtland, at father William Huntington's. Joseph Smith, father of the Prophet, was there to give blessings, as Patriarch of the [51] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the first Patriarch of this dispensation.
That was his custom, to appoint meetings of families, at which all that desired patriarchal blessings of family or relatives could attend, and he spent most of the day in blessing all that had a desire to hear what the Lord had in store for them, through their faithfulness. At such times we would listen by spells to the wonderful rehearsals from the Patriarch of the events the family had passed through in bringing forth and establishing the Church of Christ. Sometimes he would tell us of wonderful things that would take place in the future.
On the occasion referred to the whole day was spent in this way, talking and blessing at intervals. Orson Pratt was scribe, and transmitted to paper all he could of the blessings as the words fell from the lips of the Patriarch, without pausing for the scribe to get it in full as we now are favored. Brother Pratt did his best at writing, and afterwards filled up from memory of all present that which he could not catch from the Patriarch's lips. In my blessing I was told that I would preach the Gospel before I was twenty-one years old; that I would preach to the inhabitants of the islands of the sea.
That prediction and others have taken place; in fact, every one but one in that blessing have all been fulfilled that can be fulfilled in this life. That one thing is, that I should live until I was satisfied with life. I expect that before I go over the river I will be made glad to get loose from this tabernacle.
One promise was made me in that blessing that I am confident alludes to the next life: that I should preach the Gospel to the inhabitants of the moon, "even the planet you can now behold with your eyes." That evidently alludes to a time when I will not be cumbered with this unwieldy tabernacle.
The people that will be the subjects of my care and interest then are a little different from those I have ministered to on this planet. According to the description given of them by the Prophet Joseph, they are about six feet in height as a general thing, dress quite uniformly in about the Quaker style, and live to near the age of one thousand years.
That same Patriarch told my mother that "her flesh should never see corruption," and we all thought as a matter of course she would never die. But she did die, though, for all that. And, notwithstanding [52] she died, not one of the family ever spoke or thought, so far as I know of, one word or thought of doubt as to the truth of Mormonism or the validity of the authority and gift of the Patriarch. It was something we did not understand, and that was all there was of it; so it passed out of our minds for years.
Mother Zina Huntington died in Nauvoo in July, 1839, and was buried in the old burying ground that had been used by the previous inhabitants of that town called Commerce, as it was named before we settled there.
As Nauvoo grew to the dimensions of a city in a few years, the, old burying ground was found to be in the very heart of the city, and the City Council passed an ordinance requiring its removal to a place distant about four miles.
My brother William was sexton, and had the work of removing all the remains. The remains of mother were taken up on the day that the Prophet held a public meeting in the grove just west of the temple, according to announcement on the Sunday previous, when he promised to speak upon the ordinance of re-baptism for the remission of sins; and after the services the congregation repaired to the Mississippi River to enjoy and witness the first ceremonies of that kind in this dispensation. Many of the passing congregation came down the road that passed through the burying ground, and there they witnessed a very strange sight, even the fulfillment of the Patriarch's promise.
Although my mother had been buried over three years, when the coffin was opened she laid there before our eyes as large, full and plump as ever in life. Her features were perfect, and not a smell of decay about her body, only the decaying pine coffin in which she was encased, for in one or two places it had commenced to crumble. That could be plainly smelled, and no other smell of decay. She weighed usually over two hundred pounds, and must have weighed about that much when she died, as she was sick a week or two only.
Her body had become hard like solid wood, and sounded like hard wood when tapped lightly with the finger, which I did, and my brother William pried up a little sliver from her breast with the point of a knife; it was not petrified as stone, but wood.
It was a strange sight to see our mother again in perfect form and feature, giving us a foretaste of the resurrection of the dead, as spoken of by Isaiah and John the Revelator.
[53]My father was there, and took special care to replace everything in as complete order as possible, especially two of her toes which he broke off while picking lumps of dirt out of the foot of the coffin. The toes he laid between her feet before closing her remains for the last time. It was a fresh funeral for our mother, after seeing her for only an hour or so.
But slowly and sadly the coffin was re-nailed and she was driven to her new and last resting place. Fifty-two years since, and I presume her body is yet as free from corruption as when we saw it on that memorable able day of the resurrecting of her incorruptible body, which undoubtedly will be raised at or just previous to the coming of our Savior in the clouds of heaven, when she will be a living body and be caught up in the air to meet the Redeemer. That resurrection was a faint foretaste of the one yet in the future.
The Young Woman's Journal, April, 1894.