Scribe's account of Dan Jones's testimony born at a Conference at Manchester, April 6, 1845. (Vol 5:170)
Elder Dan Jones, from Wales, rose, under an attack of the fever and ague, and remarked that he believed it was the intention of the evil one to prevent him speaking that evening, but he was determined to bear his testimony in spite of every opposing power. He said that he came not in the character of a delegate: he represented no conference; for if he had but baptized one, he should be able to represent three. But he would speak of a nation renowned in history, one of the most ancient nations of the earth, who had never been subdued, and to whom he hoped to be instrumental in bearing the tidings of the work of God, in the last days. He enlarged on the characteristics of his people in a manner, and with an eloquence, that told how ardently he loved his native tribe and his fatherland. He remarked that, for many years, as a mariner, he had been in search of the principles of truth--he had sought it in almost every clime--among the red men of the woods, or the civilized denizens of the city, but he had found it not until he came in contact with the followers of the prophet of the Lord, the notorious Joseph Smith; but of that despised individual he would bear his testimony, and though he might feel more at home among a tribe of Indians, or on the deck of a ship, than upon that platform and before such an audience, yet he would not flinch from bearing a faithful testimony to the character of the servant of the Lord. He had been with him
in the domestic circle, he had been with him in peril and in prison, and only left him about an hour before the murderous deed of his assassination was perpetrated; and he had now come in obedience to the counsel of the martyred prophet, as a messenger to his native land, to bear testimony of the work for which his brother had died, and which he had sealed with his blood. [We would here remark that we are utterly incapable of doing anything like justice to the address of Captain Dan Jones, for though delivered while struggling with disease, such was its effect upon ourselves, and we also believe upon others, that we ceased to write, in order to give way to the effect produced upon our feelings.]
