Suzannah Goldthorpe — Spiritual Confirmation of the Restoration

Prior to her conversion in England, Suzannah Goldthorpe experienced a spiritual manifestation that prepared her to receive the Latter-day Saint gospel. She reportedly had a dream or a profound spiritual premonition regarding the missionaries who would visit her area. When she finally heard the message of the Restoration, she recognized it as the truth she had been shown spiritually, leading to her baptism and her subsequent marriage to Thomas Heaps in 1854. This spiritual foundation sustained her through the hardships of the Cotton Mission and the settlement of Escalante.

Recording note: No verbatim first-person text of this experience survives in a public archival source. The account was preserved by Pearl Gates Christensen, a granddaughter and Daughters of Utah Pioneers historian, from family recollection of Goldthorpe's testimony. Suzannah Goldthorpe (1834–1911) joined the Church in Yorkshire, England, married Thomas Heaps in 1854, crossed the plains with the Heaps family, and helped settle Escalante, Utah, as one of its founding mothers; her descendants preserved her stories of spiritual preparation for the gospel.