Aunt Gilbert Returns to Life Five Hours After Ten Men Pronounced Her Dead (1847)

“In the fall of 1847 we moved to St. Croix Falls. We kept a hotel there. One day a man came along, he said he was a doctor from Quincy, Illinois. He had some roots he wanted to sell. He said they were good for colds, bleeding at the lungs, and liver complaint. He gave us some to taste. We all tasted it. In a few minutes we were all taken violently ill. My husband and I were very sick, and my two boys, one ten years and six months old, and the other three and a half years old, were taken with convulsions. They died at three o'clock. Aunt Gilbert was also taken with convulsions and died. We laid them out and covered them with a sheet. My husband and I were not expected to live from one moment to another. About nine o'clock that evening Aunt Gilbert came to life. She had convulsions for two weeks after that, and it took two or three men to hold her. The doctors were surprised at her condition, for they and ten men had pronounced her dead five hours before she came to life again. The people of the town thought the man who sold us the roots had poisoned us on purpose. They put a rope around his neck and took him to my window to hang him. I was feeling very bad, and I expected to die and go to my children, but I begged them not to hang him, but to try him by law. I had a dream that night. I saw my two boys and my aunt. They looked so happy. I asked them if they were happy. They said they were. I asked them if they had accepted the gospel. They said they had. I felt comforted.”

— Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Autobiography