Mary Fielding Smith's Oxen Healed by Priesthood Administration on the Pioneer Trail (1848)

On the 1848 westward trek to the Salt Lake Valley, the widow Mary Fielding Smith — Hyrum Smith's wife, traveling with her young son Joseph F. Smith — faced repeated mishaps and the loss of oxen. A company captain (Cornelius P. Lott) told her she would "be a burden to the company" and urged her to turn back. She refused, declaring, "I will beat you to the valley and ask for no help either."

About midway between the Platte and Sweetwater rivers, one of her best oxen, "Old Buck," laid down in the yoke as if poisoned and was given up for dead. Father Lott blustered that this proved she would need help. Mary Fielding Smith produced a bottle of consecrated oil and asked her brother Joseph Fielding and James Lawson (and in another account, Brother Terry) to administer to the ox exactly as they would to a sick person. They poured oil on the head of the ox, laid their hands upon it, and rebuked the power of the destroyer. "Immediately the ox got up and within a very few moments again pulled in the yoke as if nothing had ever happened." The company was greatly astonished.

Before the company had proceeded far, a second ox fell the same way; with the same administration it was healed. A third ox was likewise healed by the same ordinance. Later, at the Rattlesnake Bend on the Sweetwater, an old ox named "Old Bully" laid down and died of sheer old age — but the healed oxen continued the journey. When the captain's own oxen later met the same misfortune, Mary offered help, but her assistance was declined.

At the final camping place before the valley, her oxen strayed again and the captain would not wait, leaving her behind. Shortly after the company left, a cloudburst of rain poured, driving the cattle back into camp. They yoked up, traveled through the night with James Lawson as guide, passed the stalled captain on the way, and reached the fort at 11 o'clock the night of September 23, 1848 — the next day the tired, dirty captain was just entering the fort, fulfilling Mary's words: "I will beat you to the valley and ask for no help either."

The miracle is multiply attested across three primary sources: (1) Joseph F. Smith's fuller account in the Life of Joseph F. Smith (pp. 150-151); (2) Joseph F. Smith, "How One Widow [Mary Fielding Smith] Crossed the Plains," Young Woman's Journal, Feb. 1919, 165, 171; and (3) the Sketch of the Life of Rachel Fielding Burton (1914), an independent corroboration: "Once while traveling on the Plains, the ox we had of Aunt Smith's became sick, so sick it seemed as though it would die; but my father poured oil on it and administered to it. It lay perfectly still a few minutes then shook itself, ate a little grass and it was alright after that. So father hitched it up and we went on our way rejoicing."