On June 27, 1844, not long after singing "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" to his cellmates, John Taylor lay suffering on the floor of Carthage Jail. He had endured terrible injury at the hands of an angry mob that had just killed the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. This tragic even became a defining moment in the history of the Church and in the life of John Taylor.

In Witness to the Martyrdom, Mark H. Taylor, a great-great-grandson of John Taylor, revives the only eyewitness account of these events. Though the mob had planned to leave no survivors, the seriously wounded Apostle John Taylor endured to tell the tale and went on to succeed Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as the Church's third president. Witness to the Martyrdom provides readers a front-row seat to John Taylor's amazing eyewitness account of that fateful day in 1844.