Church History

John Tanner: receiving, giving, and remembering

Explore this story

1. A hand offered in the name of Christ
2. A decision that moved a household
3. Resources put to work at Kirtland
4. A family within the gathering and displacement
5. The note that became a remembered gift
6. Watch the official film
7. Pause and reflect

A hand offered in the name of Christ

John Tanner was a farmer and timberland owner in Bolton, New York, when missionaries brought him the restored gospel. He was fifty-four years old. Jared Carter recorded finding him unable to put weight on one foot after months of lameness. Tanner already believed in the Book of Mormon. Carter invited him to try walking in the name of Jesus Christ, took his hand, and commanded him to walk. In Carter’s account, Tanner was healed.

Tanner was baptized at Bolton Landing on September 17, 1832. The following February, Orson Pratt ordained him a priest. His new faith soon changed where he would live and what he would do with the property he had accumulated. The prosperous New York landowner began preparing to join the Saints in Ohio.

A decision that moved a household

In December 1834, Tanner felt an urgent need to go to Kirtland. He disposed of property and set out with his household on Christmas morning. The journey covered roughly five hundred miles. When the family arrived in January 1835, the Saints faced an immediate problem: money was due on the land where they were building the temple.

Tanner lent Joseph Smith $2,000 to meet that need. Joseph gave him a note for the loan. Tanner’s arrival connected a family’s long winter journey with the practical demands of a building already under construction.

Resources put to work at Kirtland

Tanner’s financial support extended beyond that first loan. He advanced funds to the temple committee and joined others in backing purchases of goods. These commitments put his own resources at risk. His name appears in the financial history of Kirtland as a lender, donor, and stockholder in the Kirtland Safety Society.

The temple was a shared undertaking. The revelation now recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 109 preserves Joseph Smith’s dedication prayer, offered on March 27, 1836. It speaks of the Saints’ poverty, their work, and their desire to build a house to God’s name. Tanner’s contributions helped meet material needs within that larger effort of worship and sacrifice.

A family within the gathering and displacement

Tanner left Kirtland for Far West in 1838. In Missouri, he was severely beaten during the violence against the Saints. By the following spring he had moved again, this time to New Liberty in Illinois. In March 1840 he settled near Montrose, across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo.

He again helped with temple construction, contributing to the Nauvoo Temple while rebuilding his family’s life. In April 1844, at sixty-five, he received a mission appointment to New York. The Church’s missionary record names David Pettegrew as his companion and records their departure on April 28. Tanner’s service now took him eastward again, away from the Mississippi settlements where he had made another home.

The note that became a remembered gift

Before that mission, according to the later family account, Tanner met Joseph Smith in Nauvoo and handed back the $2,000 note from Kirtland. Joseph asked what he wanted done with it. Tanner forgave the debt. A loan that had helped secure the temple land nearly a decade earlier became an outright gift.

After the Saints left Nauvoo, Tanner reached the Council Bluffs area in 1846. He and members of his family crossed the plains with the Willard Richards company in 1848; he was sixty-nine when that journey began. He settled in South Cottonwood in the Salt Lake Valley and died in 1850. The places in his record trace repeated departures and fresh beginnings, with his labor and means offered to the growing Church in each new home.