I came to Nauvoo in the fall of 1842. At this time I met the Prophet Joseph Smith, and knew him from then till the time of his death. I was only a boy of eleven when I first knew him, but I always loved him, and no amusements or games were as interesting to me as to hear him talk.
I remember one day I was at his home playing with his children, when he came home and brought two men. These men had been arrested for abusing Joseph. He brought them in and treated them as he would one who had never done him a wrong; gave them their dinner before he would allow them to depart. Just before they sat down to dinner he brought his children up and introduced them. Pointing to me he said: “This is a neighbor’s little boy.”
As a boy, my testimony that Joseph Smith was a true Prophet was as strong as it is now as a man; and I verily testify that Joseph Smith was a true Prophet of the living God.
Alva Alexander, “Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Young Woman’s Journal 17, no. 12, December 1906, p. 541; B. H. Roberts, History of the Church, Vol 5, p. 460.