John Taylor Survives Carthage Jail — A Pocket Watch Deflects the Bullet Aimed at His Heart (June 27, 1844)

John Taylor, one of the Apostles and future third President of the Church, experienced one of the most dramatic survivals in early Church history. On June 27, 1844, when an angry mob of approximately 200 men attacked Carthage Jail where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were imprisoned, Taylor was present as a witness.

Taylor later described the moments as streams of fire passing by him as thick as his arm. He was unarmed. The mob had guns. He was, in his own words, "more calm, unruffled, and energetic, and acted with more promptness and decision" than in almost any crisis of his life.

As shots rang out and Hyrum Smith fell, Taylor fought off the guns at the door with a walking stick. Then he ran to the window. A ball struck his thigh. He lost all power of locomotion and fell onto the windowsill. "I am shot!" He felt himself falling outward toward the yard below, where the mob waited. Then he fell back inside from an unknown cause.

He crawled toward the bed. Three more bullets struck him — in the leg, the hip, the arm, and the chest. Joseph Smith was shot and fell from the window. The attackers retreated.

In total, Taylor was shot five times. Yet despite being shot by a mob determined to murder the prisoners, Taylor survived this onslaught.

When Taylor's family received his belongings in Nauvoo, they were astonished. His pocket watch had been struck by a ball. The crystal was ground to powder. Fragments were still inside. Taylor then understood what had saved him: "A ball had struck me at the time I felt myself falling out of the window, and it was this force that threw me inside. I was indeed falling out, when some villain aimed at my heart. The ball struck my watch, and forced me back; if I had fallen out I should assuredly have been killed. This ball, intended to dispatch me, was turned by an overruling Providence into a messenger of mercy, and saved my life. I felt that the Lord had preserved me by a special act of mercy; that my time had not yet come, and that I still had a work to perform upon the earth."

Taylor later testified: "I felt the bullet strike my watch, and I fell down stunned...It was a narrow escape." His pocket watch is preserved in the Church History Museum. The survival of John Taylor, against all odds when facing point-blank fire from an angry mob, demonstrated the Lord's protection of His servants even in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances. Taylor's preservation allowed him to serve as a crucial eyewitness to the martyrdom and to carry forward the work of the Church — becoming its third President.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

As I expected them every moment to rush into the room— and nothing but extreme cowardice that kept them out— as the tumult and pressure increased, without any other hope, I made a spring for the window, which was right in front of the jail door, where the mob was standing, and also exposed to the fire of the Carthage Greys, who were stationed some ten or twelve rods off. The weather was hot and , we all of us had our coats off and the window was raised to admit air, as I reached the window and was on the point of leaping out, I was struck by a ball from the door, about mid way of my thigh, which struck the bone and flattened out almost to the size of a quarter dollar, and then passed on through the fleshy part to within about half an inch of the outside.