John Horner Gives $6,000 to Stranded Missionaries — Enabling the Gospel to Reach Asia, Australia and the Pacific

In January 1853, a company of missionaries called from Salt Lake City arrived in San Francisco on their way to distant missions: British Guiana, the Sandwich Islands, Australia, Hindustan, Siam, and China. They had no funds to purchase passage to their various destinations.

They met with John M. Horner and were counseled to try raising money from the local community. After going door to door, they could not raise enough for even a single passage. They returned to Brother Horner.

Horner, recognizing the situation, gave them $6,000 out of his own means — enough to pay passage for the entire missionary company to their respective fields.

The Journal History of the Church recorded this on 22 January 1853. Without Horner's temporal blessing, the opening of the gospel to multiple nations and island groups in that wave of 1853 missions would have been halted at the San Francisco dock.