Monday, February 28, 2022

William G. Hartley on the Miraculous Healing Associated with a Cloak blessed by Joseph Smith

  

Cloak Blessed by a Prophet

 

Sickness sometimes was rampant in Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith went among the people and administered to them. On occasion he blessed cloth articles that could be used by others in healing and blessing the sick and afflicted (Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 221-23, and illustration 89, a patch from the Butler cloak). For the benefit of the Butler family, he blessed John’s large broadcloth cape or cloak. During the rest of their lives, John and Caroline wrapped this cloak around family members when they became ill. In time the coat passed to the next generation. In 1945 Bertha M. Butler wrote that the family of John Lowe Butler Jr., inherited the cloak:

 

The family would often put it around an afflicted person and through their faith in the blessing of the cape they were made better. The cape became old and somewhat shabby and was finally cut into ten pieces, one piece each for the ten [nine surviving] children of John L. Butler II. My husband John Lowe Butler III received one piece of the cape and I have had it in my possession for nearly 30 years. (William G. Hartley, My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler a Mormon Frontiersman [C. L. Dalton Enterprises, 2017], 114)

 

In the endnote to the above, we read that

 

Bertha Butler Thuber, “John Lowe Butler’s Coak,” BFA. Bertha said that at a Daughters of Utah Pioneers meeting where she told about the cape, a sister who did not feel well eagerly grasped the cape, believing it could heal. “She said when she touched it there was a great thrill went all thru her boy, she gave testimony that this piece of cape really carried healing power with it. She felt the power go thru her system and has been better since that time.” In 1957 Zettie Butler Christiansen, another daughter of John Lowe Butler, Jr., told her daughter Laurel, “When our family were youngsters we knew that if we were ill, if we wrapped a certain cloak around us we would get well. The cloak was one which was blessed by the Prophet Joseph Smith for the purpose of healing the sick and was given to my grandfather John Lowe Butler, Sr., who in turn gave it to my father, John Lowe Butler, Jr. Each of father’s children, including those of his second wife, were given a pieces of the cloak.” Zettie Butler Christiansen, typed copy of statement in BFA. (Ibid., 452 n. 49)