Angels Harrow David Whitmer's Field Overnight So He Can Meet Joseph Smith

In the spring of 1829, David Whitmer was eager to travel to Harmony, Pennsylvania to meet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, who had been writing to him about the translation of the Book of Mormon. But his father, Peter Whitmer Sr., insisted that David first finish harrowing the south field and spreading plaster — a task that would take at least two full days.

David agreed but was downcast. His young sister, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, grieved for her brother's disappointment and watched him labor hard through the day, 'his long body and broad shoulders contesting with the earth as with a strong wrestler.' By evening, the task was scarcely half done.

Rising early the next morning to prepare breakfast, Elizabeth stepped into the yard and glanced toward the field. To her amazement, it was entirely and evenly harrowed — the lime neatly spread across the whole field — while two strange men, just visible through the morning mist, were leaving the place at the far side of the field.

David came out of the house and stood transfixed beside her.

'Elizabeth? . . . Elizabeth! . . . It must be, it can only be. . . .'

'Yes,' she breathed, 'angels.'

With the work miraculously completed, David was free to travel to Harmony. This journey led directly to the Whitmer home becoming the place where the translation of the Book of Mormon was completed, and where the Three Witnesses received their divine manifestation of the golden plates. The miraculous harrowing of the field, witnessed by young Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, opened the door to one of the most consequential events in the Restoration.

The account was preserved and passed down through the Whitmer family by David Whitmer's great-granddaughter, Helen Van Cleave Blankmeyer.