Wilford Woodruff Healed by Joseph Smith's Handkerchief — Twin Infants of a Non-Member Also Healed

On July 22, 1839, following his mass healing of the sick Saints at Commerce (Nauvoo), Illinois, Joseph Smith was about to board a ferry to return home. A man from the western shore — who was not a member of the Church but who had witnessed the miraculous healings — approached Joseph and pleaded with him to come heal his two twin infants, who were three months old and gravely ill.

Joseph said he could not go himself, but he would send someone. He turned to Elder Wilford Woodruff and told him to go with the man and heal the children. At the same time, Joseph reached into his pocket and pulled out a silk bandanna handkerchief, and gave it to Woodruff, saying: 'Wipe the faces of the children with it, and they should be healed; and as long as you keep that handkerchief it shall remain a league between you and me.'

Woodruff went to the man's house, wiped the faces of the two infants with the handkerchief as instructed, and both children were immediately healed.

Wilford Woodruff kept the handkerchief for the rest of his life. He later served as the fourth President of the Church and recorded this event in detail in his personal journal — one of the most carefully kept diaries in Latter-day Saint history.

This account also appears in the comprehensive FAIR Latter-day Saints article on miraculous events in early Church history, citing Joseph Smith's manuscript history and Woodruff's journal as primary sources.