Description

She Was Wearing A Dark Silk Dress

The year was 1858. Rumors reached the missionaries serving in New South Wales Australia of a large army coming to Utah to wage war against the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The missionaries began departing Australia to return home. The President of the mission Andrew Jackson Stewart had heard nothing from Church Headquarters and decided to stay. In a letter written April 10, 1858, President Stewart wrote,

Since our last Conference in January, the times have been very dull, and great opposition to the work has been manifested in Australia. The attention of almost every one has been turned to the “Mormon war.” Some say they ought to be all killed off. Others are waiting to see the result; and if the Saints are not all killed off, they will come out on the Lord’s side.

Shortly after that letter, President Stewart and another missionary, Amasa Potter were sitting in the mission office in Sydney, talking, when the door opened and in walked President Stewart’s beloved wife, Eunice. “She was wearing a dark silk dress.” Greetings were exchanged and then Eunice faced her husband and said, “Jackson, your release from your mission has come on the boat that has just come in the harbor.” And with that, “Eunice disappeared as silently and quietly as she had entered.” President Stewart went down to the post office and there indeed was the letter having just come in by ship. Both President Stewart and Elder Potter would attest to the visit of Eunice Stewart.

They later learned that at that very moment on the other side of the world in Provo, Utah, Eunice Pease Quimby Stewart lay in a coma. “When she came to, she told her children that she had been to Australia and had seen and talked to her husband. She said that he had been released from his mission and was starting home.”

Source: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWCT-N65 Volume 3 of the History of Andrew Jackson Stewart contains this account.