"A Testimony That He Would Recover from That Hour": Prayer and the Mountain Fever of Brigham Young and Albert Perry Rockwood (July 1847)

In July 1847, as the pioneer company crossed the last ranges above the Great Basin, the two sickest men in the camp were its leaders. Brigham Young had contracted mountain fever near the Bear River in Wyoming — Albert Perry Rockwood, captain of the First Hundred and one of Joseph Smith's former bodyguards, had fallen ill with the same fever and was, in Wilford Woodruff's words, "the sickest man that had been in our company." The company divided: Orson Pratt's advance party pushed on to find the valley, while Young, Rockwood, and the sick trailed behind with the rear wagons.

On the evening the crisis was deepest, Wilford Woodruff recorded what the Apostles did: "Dr. Richards, myself, and George A. Smith went before the Lord and prayed for Brother Young, and we had a testimony that he would recover from that hour."

From that hour he did. The next morning Woodruff drove his carriage back seven miles to the sick camp and "found them much better." He made up a bed and took Young and Rockwood both into the carriage, hauling them gently over the bad roads while the Twelve administered and prayed "for him and for the sick generally, according to the order of the priesthood." When Young worsened again at Weber's Fork, camp was halted a full day and the Twelve again prayed over him.

By Sunday, July 18, the fever had broken. Young rose from the sickbed and traveled on with the company, entering Emigration Canyon — where, riding in Woodruff's carriage on July 24, still weak from the fever, he lifted himself up to see the valley and spoke the words every Latter-day Saint child has learned since: "This is the right place. Drive on." A man who had stood at death's door six days before declared the resting place of a people.

Albert Perry Rockwood likewise recovered and entered the valley with the company. He returned east with Young that summer, gathered his family, and led them west in 1849, serving the rest of his life as one of the First Presidents of the Seventy and a pioneer of Farmington, Utah, until his death in 1879.