Latter-day Saint Elders Heal Native Hawaiians of Smallpox

During a devastating smallpox epidemic in Honolulu in 1853, which ultimately claimed approximately 2,000 native lives, Latter-day Saint missionaries, including Benjamin F. Johnson, Philip B. Lewis, William Farrer, and others, were kept constantly on the move to minister to the Native Hawaiian Saints. In their commitment to their ecclesiastical duties, these elders chose to defy contemporary public health quarantine and vaccination protocols. They traveled from household to household, village to village, and victim to victim, administering to the sick through the laying on of hands and the ordinances of the Church. Initially, the missionaries observed what appeared to be remarkable success, noting that among those they personally attended and who received the ordinances, the mortality rate was significantly lower than the general population. However, the reality of the epidemic proved overwhelming; despite their dedicated efforts, approximately 700 Latter-day Saints on the islands—roughly 20% of the total church community in the region—ultimately succumbed to the disease. The accounts from these missionaries, particularly those of Benjamin F. Johnson, highlight both the spiritual urgency they felt in attempting to exercise the gift of healing and the somber reality of the heavy losses suffered by the Hawaiian Saints during this period of crisis.

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

The small pox was raging at Honolulu, and had swept off about two thousand natives; the brethren were kept constantly on foot visiting and administering to the sick, with the best success, not any of them dying who had been administered to and attended to the ordinances of the Church. We have had to be very careful, and keep ourselves as much as possible from the contagion, yet we have been obliged to visit the sick, and administer to them, or see them die without help. We have been blessed and preserved, and have not taken the disease, although we have been exposed to it in its most malignant form.