Edmund Bosley's Prophecy of Ezra Taft Benson's Conversion Fulfilled

In the winter of 1839–1840, Ezra T. Benson — a prosperous twenty-nine-year-old Massachusetts-born businessman who had settled on rented land a mile from Quincy, Illinois — became acquainted with the Latter-day Saints who had been driven out of Missouri. He found them, in his own words, "very agreeable; their spirits amalgamated with mine." Their kindness as neighbors drew his heart out in sympathy toward them.

Benson recorded the pivotal moment in his own hand: "I called in a house where father Edmund Bosley and Geo. D. Grant lived. The former preached Mormonism to me, about half an hour, and after I left his house I was informed he prophesied that I should become a saint." At the time Benson had no such intention. He attended the July 1840 debate between Dr. Nelson and the Latter-day Saint spokesmen, where he first saw Joseph Smith and was convinced that the Saints' opponents proved nothing but denunciation. His wife Pamelia opened her Bible to Paul's teaching on apostles and prophets and declared she believed Joseph was a prophet of God. In August 1840, after hearing Orson Hyde and John E. Page preach on the gathering of Israel, the Bensons offered themselves for baptism — and on Sunday, July 19, 1840, Ezra and Pamelia Benson were baptized in the Mississippi River by Elder Daniel Stanton "in the presence of about three hundred people," while the crowd cried, "the Mormons have got them."

Bosley's prophecy was fulfilled beyond the conversion itself. Ezra T. Benson was soon ordained an Elder, served a mission, and in 1846 was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles by Brigham Young. He presided over the European Mission during some of its most productive years, led the settlement of Cache Valley, and as Church Agent guided the saints and freight across the plains. He recorded the prophecy himself in 1857 in his autobiography — written, as he noted, in his British mission journal at the request of Wilford Woodruff — and his descendants through his great-grandson, Church President Ezra Taft Benson, carried the name.