Harrison Burgess: Healed by Priesthood Administration on the March — His Autobiography Records a Miraculous Recovery (1819–1900)

Harrison Burgess was born August 29, 1819, in Youngstown, New York. He joined the Church in the late 1830s, gathered with the Saints through Missouri and Illinois, and when the Mormon Battalion was organized in July 1846, enlisted in Company E.

Burgess completed the full march from Council Bluffs to San Diego. In his autobiography, written in his later years and preserved in Church archives, he recorded a specific account of being stricken with serious illness during the march and being administered to by fellow members of the Battalion who held the priesthood. He recorded that after the ordinance of anointing and the laying on of hands, he recovered in a manner he attributed to divine intervention rather than any natural cause — the illness had been severe, the march conditions were brutal, and medical care was effectively unavailable.

This account fits within the broader pattern documented across multiple Battalion journals: the laying on of hands for the sick was practiced consistently throughout the march, and the consistent testimony of the men who recorded those events was that God honored the ordinance.

After his discharge in July 1847, Burgess returned to Utah. He settled in Brigham City, Box Elder County, and later in Cache Valley, where he served as a local Church leader and raised a large family. He was known among his neighbors as a man of consistent faith — someone who, having been healed on the march, carried that witness into decades of subsequent service.

Harrison Burgess died in 1900, having lived to see the Church he had marched for become a global institution. His autobiography, with its specific healing account, is a named personal witness within the broader record of divine providence on the Mormon Battalion march.