The Whitmer Field Miracle — Five Acres Plowed Overnight (1829)

In April 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were translating the Book of Mormon in Harmony, Pennsylvania. They invited David Whitmer to join them and help with the translation project, requesting that he come and help them move to the Whitmer home in Pennsylvania.

David Whitmer was torn. He wanted to support Joseph Smith, but his livelihood depended on plowing his fields. He had approximately 20 acres to plow before he could leave. He prayed and felt that he should complete his plowing and then travel to Pennsylvania.

However, the next morning, Whitmer discovered something extraordinary. Between five and seven acres of his land had been plowed during the night. When asked who had done the work, Whitmer testified: "I do not know, I cannot tell you, all I know is it was plowed. ... It was a testimony to me that I did not have any business to put off going after Joseph. I hitched up my team and ... started for Pennsylvania."

This was corroborated by a separate account from Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith's mother. She recorded that David had also left plaster (gypsum) in piles near his sister's house two days earlier to be spread on the fields. The next morning, the plaster had mysteriously been sown. David's sister told him that the children had witnessed three men sowing the plaster with remarkable speed—"they never saw anybody sow plaster so fast in their lives."

When David made inquiries among family and neighbors, no one could identify who had done the work. Lucy Mack Smith wrote: "the family were convinced that there was an exertion of supernatural power connected with this strange occurrence."

This miracle accelerated one of the most significant decisions in early Church history: David Whitmer's immediate arrival in Pennsylvania hastened the completion of the Book of Mormon translation, the establishment of the Church in 1830, and Whitmer's role as one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.

David Whitmer later became a pillar of the early Church, and the miraculous hastening of his journey to Joseph Smith proved pivotal to the Restoration itself.