George Barr's Sister's Divine Witness of his Identity
Published October 5, 2026 at 5:17 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
George Barr, having returned from Utah to his home in Houghton to visit family, reports that his sister was so influenced by the negative rumors about Latter-day Saints that she believed he would be killed if he left Utah. Upon meeting him, she could not believe it was actually him until he showed her his hand, which had a finger missing from a childhood injury.
In Their Own Words
“My relatives, even all, have received me very kindly, and they feel very glad, as they say that I have returned alive. For there had gone forth, as in other places, some most heaven-daring lies concerning the people of God. Some have said to me, that they thought if I ever attempted to leave Utah, I should be sure to be killed in the attempt. Of course all this kind of talk is very amusing to me, and it may be to you, when I tell you, that one of my sisters, when she saw me, thought that I was a person come down from the clouds, and she would not believe it was me till I showed her my hand from which a finger had been cut off when I was a little boy.”
— George Barr, Millennial Star 40:50
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 16 December 1878 (Vol. 40, No. 50). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1878-12-16_40_50 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Full first-person account: The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 40, No. 50, 16 December 1878, p. 798 https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1878-12-16_40_50
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