Description

Elder David W. Patten

Spring 1833, Avon, Ohio. A meeting was underway. A missionary stood to preach, but there was a man in the congregation determined to stop him. He was known as the county bully and had proven an annoyance to every speaker so far. This night he was particularly boisterous and when he called out for the missionary to cast out a devil, the elder suddenly stopped speaking, beelined his way through the crowd and grabbed the tormentor. Bodily, he carried him to the door and threw him ten feet out and onto a woodpile. A ripple of humor swept the crowd and the saying went up that the missionary had “cast out one devil, soul and body.”

That courageous and determined missionary was Elder David W. Patten—a powerful man physically and spiritually. A man of great faith, David was among those called to serve in the First Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1835. His service to the Lord was constant and varied. While serving as a missionary in Tennessee in the Spring of 1836 he stood face to face with that Cain who slew Abel. When the Saints faced persecution and mobocracy in Missouri it was Elder Patten whose indomitable courage and leadership earned him the nickname of Captain Fear Not. It was October 1838, when David learned of a family threatened by the mob. In command of a small group of men he found the mother and children homeless, destitute, and suffering. He gathered them up and started for safety when it began a heavy rain, adding to the misery already abundant. David asked the company to stop. He dismounted his horse and stepped off into the tall wet grass, where he commanded the storm to cease until the woman and her little ones could be conveyed to safety. The storm stopped immediately.

Then, sometime near midnight October 24, 1838, word reached Far West that a mob had kidnapped and threatened to kill three Latter-day Saints from an outlying farm. 75 men volunteered under the leadership of Captain Patten. They rode all night across the darkened prairie searching for the mob. Just before sunrise, while approaching Crooked River from the east, a voice called out, ”Who goes there?” The mob opened fire and men began to fall. Captain Patten called “God and Liberty! And led the charge. The mob scattered and began to run. As they fled, one mobber stepped out from behind a tree and shot Elder Patten in the stomach.

He was carried toward Far West but the agony of movement was too intense. At the home of Stephen Winchester his brethren and wife gathered about him. To his wife he said in his last moments “Whatever you do else, O, do not deny the faith.” Turning to the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum, and Elder Kimball he said, “Brethren, you have held me here by your faith, but do give me up and let me go, I beseech you.” They did so and moments later he was gone—the first apostolic martyr of this dispensation. He was laid to rest somewhere near Far West, his grave today unknown and unmarked. As for Elder David Wyman Patten, the Lord took him unto himself. (See DC 124:19)

Source: Life of David W. Patten by Lycurgus Wilson