JACOB WHITMER.
Jacob Whitmer was thirty years of age when he saw the plates, having been born on the 27th of January, 1800. He, too, passed through the trying scenes incident to the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from Jackson county. But after enduring well for a season he left the Church, in 1838, making his home near Richmond, in Ray county, Missouri. Here he lived a quiet, retired life, and reared his family in respectability; his eldest son, David P. Whitmer, rising to some local prominence as a lawyer, and serving one or two terms as mayor of Richmond. To the day of his death—which occurred April 21, 1856—Jacob Whitmer was true to his testimony of the truth of the Book of Mormon. Though he severed his relations with the Church, because he did not agree with the policy of the leading elders, he continued true to the special trust God had committed to him—an actual knowledge of the existence of the Nephite record—as long as he lived.