Louisa Bonelli Hamblin — The Swiss Conversion Vision

Before the Bonelli family emigrated from Switzerland, Louisa's father, George Bonelli, received a divine dream or vision in which he saw two men bringing a new and true gospel to their land. When Latter-day Saint missionaries, including Jabiz Woodard, eventually arrived in their village of Bussnang, George recognized them immediately as the men from his vision. Louisa, then a young girl of about thirteen, was a primary witness to her father's recognition and was deeply moved by the spiritual manifestation. This miraculous preparation led to the conversion of the entire family. Louisa walked the entire 1,300 miles of the trail to Salt Lake City with the Israel Evans handcart company in 1857, at age thirteen, and the family later joined the colonization of Utah's 'Cotton Mission.' She married the noted frontiersman Jacob Hamblin in 1865 and lived to 1931.

Recording note: This account survives through family and DUP biographical sketches ('Louisa Bonelli Hamblin,' submitted by Eloise Whiting and by Helen Cram Starr). Louisa's own autobiographical sketch is published in Pioneer Pathways 5:223, but the portion transcribed publicly by the Church History Biographical Database covers her handcart journey and does not include her father's dream, so no verbatim first-person text of the vision is available online.