It was hot on that day in September 1893 when two elders – Nicholas Miller (age 39, from Manassa, Colorado) and Benjamin LeBaron (age 33, from Mesa, Arizona) – passed along the rural road near Gadsden, Alabama, looking for people willing to accept their religious tracts. Neighbors had been warning neighbors all along their route in those foothills at the southern end of Appalachia that the Mormons were coming. Most wouldn’t even respond to the elders’ knock, and those few who did answer their doors turned away without offering the water that both men would have welcomed.

John the Baptist Gayler (age 35, still living in the very neighborhood where he had been born) had also heard that the Mormons were coming, but it wasn’t in his nature to turn away a thirsty man. He reached out to shake Elder Miller’s hand, and without breaking grip he pulled the missionary into his home. Continue reading John the Baptist Gayler: “Come In!” →