175 years ago today - 1840 Spring

[Helen Mar Kimball] In the spring of 1840 about eight o'clock in the morning Mrs. Rhoda Whitney sister-in-law to Bishop N. K. Whitney and her brother John Ballard, my wife Caroline Whitney and myself were crossing the Mississippi river from Montrose to Nauvoo when we saw the following strange spectacle.

"When we had got about one third of the way across the river we saw a couple of men about sixty rods down the stream riding on horse back on the top of the water. They were going diagonally down the river in the direction of Joseph Smith's residence.

"We stopped our skiff and watched these men until they reached the shore. Just as they arrived at the shore the horses suddenly disappeared and the strangers remained on the shore, the horses trotted along on the top of the water just as they would have done had they been trotting through a very shallow stream, gently splashing the water hither and thither. We resumed our rowing but our attention was constantly directed towards them as they stood on the shore until our view was obstructed by a bend in the river.

"JOS. C. KINGSBURY."

[Source: Whitney, Helen Mar, Jeni Broberg Holzapfel, and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History, Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997]

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