Church History

Eleazer Miller: a simple witness and a continuing life

Explore this story

1. A listener who wanted to know
2. A missionary before the famous encounter
3. What Brigham remembered hearing
4. An outward covenant in April 1832
5. A life that continued westward
6. Watch the official film
7. Pause and reflect

A listener who wanted to know

Brigham Young encountered the Book of Mormon soon after its publication in 1830. Copies reached his family through the missionary work of Samuel Smith. Brigham examined the message for about two years before accepting baptism. He was a working craftsman in Mendon, New York, making and repairing furniture and fitting doors, windows, and other woodwork.

At home, his wife Miriam was ill with tuberculosis. Alongside earning a living, Brigham helped care for her and their two young daughters. His search for religious truth unfolded within those daily responsibilities. He read, listened, and considered what the missionaries taught before committing himself to the Church.

A missionary before the famous encounter

Eleazer Miller was born in Coeymans, New York, in 1795. He married Rebecca Van Zant in 1816. The Church’s biographical database dates his baptism to May 1831 and records missionary service in New York and Pennsylvania that year, followed by another New York mission in 1832. In the spring of 1832 he was thirty-six; Brigham was thirty.

Miller carried his new faith beyond his own household. His recorded assignments would also take him to the Earnestown and Loughborough area of Upper Canada from June through September 1832. His encounter with Brigham belonged to this early period of preaching, when converts were already taking the message to other communities.

What Brigham remembered hearing

Brigham later described hearing a man who lacked polished speech or conspicuous learning bear a simple testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. Church teaching materials identify that missionary as Eleazer Miller. What stayed with Brigham was the conviction with which the witness was offered and the spiritual confirmation he himself experienced.

In his recollection, the Holy Ghost illuminated his understanding. He became convinced that the testimony was true. Miller’s words reached a man who had already spent a long time examining the gospel. The remembered encounter joins those two parts of Brigham’s conversion: patient inquiry and a personal witness of the Spirit.

An outward covenant in April 1832

On a cold, snowy day in April 1832, Miller baptized Brigham in Brigham’s own millstream. Brigham later remembered feeling humble and childlike, with an assurance that his sins were forgiven. He was confirmed and ordained an elder, and soon began preaching himself.

Miriam was baptized within a few weeks. Other members of the Young family and their neighbors also joined the growing Mendon branch. That September, Miriam died. Brigham’s first months in the Church held both the beginning of a new ministry and the loss of his wife, leaving him with their two daughters.

A life that continued westward

Sixteen years later, Miller and Rebecca traveled west in Brigham Young’s 1848 company. Miller was fifty-two. John Heward, writing about his own journey, remembered starting west in company with Miller and spending several days at Winter Quarters before moving onward. Heward described the larger journey’s practical demands: finding feed, using buffalo chips for fuel, caring for footsore cattle, and receiving help with teams as the travelers approached the mountains.

The company reached the Salt Lake Valley in September. Miller’s record continued in Utah long after the millstream baptism for which he became best known. He died in Salt Lake City on April 12, 1876, aged eighty. His service had stretched from the small branches of the early 1830s to the established communities of the American West.