On the evening of January 23, 1888, David Whitmer, then past eighty-three years of age, called his family and friends to his bedside and bore his testimony to the truth of the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Though weak, he affixed his signature to several papers in a hand described as wonderfully firm. He died two days later, on January 25, 1888, at five o'clock in the afternoon, at his home in Richmond, Missouri.