Sallie Heller Conrad

Sally Heller Conrad

Undoubtedly when Sally took the job she hadn’t planned on this.  She was 18 years old and hired on to help out a busy mother around the house. The home was small and in addition to the large family already living there, there were guests living at the house as well.

Something was going on upstairs. One day Sally noticed a couple of young men come down from the second story. They looked most unusual. Their faces were “exceedingly white and strange.” She asked the family why they looked that way, but no one would tell her. It was like some kind of secret that the family had.

As time passed it happened again and again, and each time Sally saw them, their faces were that same unearthly white. It frightened her, until finally, she went to the lady of the house and announced “that she would not stay with her until she knew the cause of the strange looks of these men.”

The lady of that house was Mother Mary Whitmer of Fayette, New York. It was June 1829. Mother Whitmer explained to Sally that those two men, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, were translating an ancient record written upon gold plates by the gift and power of God, and “that the power of God was so great in the room that they could hardly endure it; at times angels were in the room in their glory, which nearly consumed them.”

“This satisfied the girl and opened the way to embracing the Gospel.”

Sally Heller Conrad married in the faith, came west, and died in Provo, Utah, July 23, 1903.  She was 92 years old.

Source: Remembering Joseph, Mark L. McConkie, 2003, p. 248