Artemus Millet — Healed of Cholera by Joseph Smith While Building the Kirtland Temple

Artemus Millet (1790–1882) was one of the most skilled masons in early Church history and the superintendent of construction for the Kirtland Temple. A trained stoneworker who had been baptized by Brigham Young in Canada in January 1833, he was called to Kirtland by letter from Hyrum Smith — told that 'it was the will of the Lord' that he should work on the temple. He arrived with his family in April 1834 and took charge of the entire construction project.

His conversion itself came through a miraculous healing: in 1831 he had suffered from a severe chest illness for months, and wrote that he 'did not get over it until the next August, when I received a witness of the latter day work in a manifestation of the healing power.'

But his most dramatic miracle came in 1835, while supervising the temple construction. Artemus was struck by cholera — a disease that killed rapidly and with terrifying violence. In his own journal, he described what happened:

'I was taken sick with cholera and we sent for Joseph Smith Senior and John his brother, who said the sickness was not unto death. And when they administered it did not have the desired effect. I suffered such excruciating pain that my groaning was heard at Joseph Smith Junior a distance of 250 yards. I was afterwards told that when in agony I called out "Let Joseph Smith Junior come and lay his hands on me and I shall be healed and I know it," not knowing what I said. He pressed his way through the crowd for the house was filled with people, and came forward and laying his hands upon my head asked God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ to heal me. The vomiting and purging ceased and I began to amend from that very moment.'

Artemus Millet survived to see the Kirtland Temple completed and dedicated in March 1836. He also survived a separate near-death experience in which he fell into twenty-foot-deep icy water while disembarking from a ship at Kingston — an event he recorded as a miracle because 'numbers had fallen in' but none had previously been 'taken out alive.' He claimed the promise of the Saints as he fell and was saved.