Wilford Woodruff
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Wilford Woodruff (March 1, 1807 – September 2, 1898) was the fourth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), from 1889 until his death in 1898. His large collection of well documented diaries provide an important record of LDS history.
Woodruff was one of nine children born to Aphek Woodruff, a miller working in Farmington, Connecticut. Wilford's mother Beulah died of "spotted fever" June 11th 1808 at the age of 26, when he was just fifteen months old. Aphek married Azulah Hart November 9th, 1810. In 1821 he began work as a miller. As a young man, Woodruff worked at both the sawmill and flour mill owned by his father.
Woodruff joined the LDS church December 31 1833 when the church numbered only a few thousand believers clustered around Kirtland, Ohio. On January 13th, 1835 he left for his first full-time mission, preaching without "purse or scrip" in Arkansas and Tennessee.
Woodruff was always known as a conservative religious man, but was also enthusiastically involved in the social and economic life of his community. He was an avid outdoorsman, enjoying fishing and hunting. It is quite likely that Woodruff was the first fly fisherman in the Rocky Mountains. As an adult, Woodruff was a farmer, horticulturist and stockman by trade, but also wrote extensively for church periodicals.
Marriage and family
Wilford Woodruff lived during the period that the LDS church authorized plural marriage, and was married to a total of six women; however, not all of these marriages were concurrent. His wives were:- Phoebe Whittemore Carter, m. 13 April 1837.
- Mary Ann Jackson, m. 15 April 1846 (later divorced)
- Emma Smoot Smith, m. 13 March 1853.
- Sarah Brown, m. 13 March 1853.
- Sarah Delight Stocking, m. 31 July 1857.
- Circumstantial evidence also suggests he courted and may have married Lydia Mountford, an international lecturer and Jewish rights advocate, in September 1897.[#endnote_fn1]
Church Service
Wilford Woodruff, along with his brother Azmon, was baptized by missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on 31 December 1833 in Richland, New York. Other members of the Woodruff family, including Aphek, joined the church in 1839. Shortly after his baptism, he accompanied Joseph Smith, Jr. and his brother Hyrum in a journey from Kirtland, Ohio to the Missouri, as a member of Zion's Camp. In 1838, he led a party of fifty-three members in wagons from the Maine coast to Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1839, at the age of 32, Wilford Woodruff was ordained a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by Brigham Young. He became a member of the Nauvoo City Council, and served as chaplain for the Nauvoo Legion, a local militia. He was also a member of the Anointed Quorum and Council of Fifty, and received his Endowment, a Mormon Temple Ordinance from Smith in the Red Brick Store prior to the completion of the Nauvoo Temple. After the death of Joseph Smith, Woodruff was an active participant in the westward progression of the LDS Church. He was a member of the first pioneer company of Latter Day Saints to arrive in Utah's Great Basin in 1847.In 1856, Woodruff began serving as church historian, and served in this position for thirty-three years. A religious conservative, he offered charismatic sermons during the period of Mormon Reformation in 1856-1858. During his time as Temple President over the first completed temple in Utah, the Saint George, Utah Temple (1877), Woodruff standardized temple ceremonies, under the direction of Brigham Young. He was baptized for the dead in behalf of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and other founding fathers, after he claimed to receive a vision, visitation or manifestation of the departed spirits of these men.
Missionary Service
Woodruff became noted for his success as a missionary, completing several missions during his lifetime, and baptizing thousands of converts. The church sent him to Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky (1835-1836), and to the Fox Islands, Maine (1837). As a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, he was assigned to England as a proselyting missionary (1839), to England as President of the Church's European/English mission (1844), and finally to the Eastern United States (1848).On missionary work, Woodruff wrote:
- When you go into a neighborhood to preach the Gospel, never attempt to tear down a man’s house, so to speak, before you build him a better one; never, in fact, attack any one’s religion, wherever you go. Be willing to let every man enjoy his own religion. It is his right to do that. If he does not accept your testimony with regard to the Gospel of Christ, that is his affair, and not yours. Do not spend your time in pulling down other sects and parties. We haven’t time to do that. It is never right to do that.
- :::Wilford Woodruff
- :::Contributor, August 1895, pp.636–37.
Actions as Church President
With the death of John Taylor in 1887, Wilford Woodruff assumed leadership of the Church as the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Woodruff spent years as an apostle evading territorial marshals on the Mormon "underground," escaping prosecution for polygamy, and was unable even to publicly attend his first wife's funeral. On behalf of the Church, he courted the favor of prominent Republicans Leland Stanford and Isaac Trumbo.Woodruff was in Sanpete County, Utah, in hiding from federal agents seeking him on anti-polygamy warrants, when he learned of Taylor's death. He returned to Salt Lake City in secret to take charge of the quorum, and was not seen in any public meetings. Two years later Woodruff was ordained as President. He was eighty-two. Woodruff had never expected to become president, as Taylor was the younger man.
During his tenure, the church faced a number of legal battles with the United States, primarily over the practice of plural marriage. The church faced a real possibility of being destroyed as a viable legal entity, as it was faced with disfranchisement and federal confiscation of Mormon property, including temples.
Citing revelation, Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto which ended polygamy or plural marriage in the Territory of Utah and directed Latter-day Saints only to enter into marriages that are recognized by the laws in the areas in which they reside. He wrote in his diary, I have arrived at the point in the history of my life as the president of the Church...where I am under the necessity of acting for the temporal salvation of the Church.... (Wilford Woodruff-Diary, Sept. 25, 1890). Some historians consider this policy statement his most important contribution to the stability of the church.
Despite the Manifesto, historians such as D. Michael Quinn, B. Carmon Hardy, and Richard S. VanWagoner assert that Woodruff continued to secretly encourage, or at least allow, plural marriages until his death in places where such marriages could legally be performed, such as Mexico.
During the administration of Woodruff, the church faced severe financial difficulties, some of which were related to the legal problems over polygamy. Although he instituted a number of sound financial practices, he was unable to completely solve these difficulties during his time as president. The Manti Temple and Salt Lake Temple were dedicated. Woodruff was the LDS president who established Bannock Academy (later Ricks College and then Brigham Young University-Idaho), in Rexburg, Idaho and organized the Genealogical Society of Utah. He died in San Francisco, California in 1898, and was succeeded in office by Lorenzo Snow. During his life, he had observed significant growth in the LDS movement as, at his death, he was the leader of more than a quarter of a million followers worldwide.
Diarist
Many historians consider Woodruff's journals his most important contribution to LDS history. He kept a daily record of his life and activities within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, beginning with his baptism in 1833 until his death. Matthias F. Cowley, editor of his published journals, observed that Woodruff was ...perhaps, the best chronicler of events in all the history of the Church. These meticulous records provide invaluable insights into not only church doctrines and the daily actions of church leaders, but also into the social and cultural aspects of early Mormonism. Several significant actions and speeches of early Church leaders are known only through these diaries.Some recollections were recorded in his journal years after the events, which have caused some historians to question the complete reliability of certain events, as they were not recorded contemporarily. However, in his "A Comprehensive History of the Church" (6:354–55), historian and ecclesiastical leader B. H. Roberts wrote:
- President Woodruff rendered a most important service to the church. His Journals, regularly and methodically and neatly kept and strongly bound, …constitute an original documentary historical treasure which is priceless. The church is indebted to these Journals for a reliable record of discourses and sayings of the Prophet of the New Dispensation — Joseph Smith — which but for him would have been lost forever. The same is true as to the discourses and sayings of Brigham Young, and other leading elders of the church; [and] for minutes of important council meetings, decisions, judgments, policies, and many official actions of a private nature, without which the writer of history may not be able to get right viewpoints on many things — in all these respects these Journals of President Woodruff are invaluable.
Historical Summary
- 1807, March 1; Wilford Woodruff is born in Farmington Hartford County, Connecticut, to Beulah Thompson Woodruff and Aphek Woodruff
- 1808; June 11; His mother dies at age 26.
- 1821; Begins work as a miller.
- 1832; Moves with his brother Azmon and Azmon’s wife to Richland, Oswego County, New York, where they purchase a farm.
- 1833; Baptized and confirmed by Zera Pulsipher.
- 1835; Leaves Missouri for his first full-time mission, preaching the gospel in Arkansas and Tennessee.
- 1837, May 31; Leaves Kirtland, Ohio, to serve a mission in the Fox Islands, off the coast of the state of Maine.
- 1839, August 8; Leaves for a mission in England.
- 1847, participated in Vanguard company's exploration of the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley.
- 1887, assumed leadership of the Church as the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles upon the death of President John Taylor.
- 1889, ordained as President of the Church.
- 1890, October 6; Members of the Church attending general conference unanimously sustain the revelation President Woodruff received regarding plural marriage.
- 1894, November 13; Oversees the establishment of the Genealogical Society of Utah.
- 1898, September 2; Dies in San Fransico, California, after a brief illness.
Quotes
- "
[Anti-Mormons] present objection to the Latter-day Saints, they say, is plurality of wives. It is this principle they are trying to raise a persecution against now. But how was it in Missouri, Kirtland, Jackson county, Far West, Caldwell county, in all our drivings and afflictions, before this principle was revealed to the Church? Certainly it was not polygamy then. No, it was prophets, it was "revelation, it was the organization of an institution founded by revelation from God." They did not believe in that, and that was the objection in those days. If we were to do away with polygamy, it would only be one feather in the bird, one ordinance in the Church and kingdom. Do away with "that," then we must do away with prophets and Apostles, with revelation and the gifts and graces of the Gospel, and finally give up our religion altogether and turn sectarians and do as the world does, then all would be right. We just can't do that, for God has commanded us to build up His kingdom and to bear our testimony to the nations of the earth, and we are going to do it, come life or come death. He has told us to do thus, and we shall obey Him in days to come as we have in days past. Brethren and sisters, let us exercise faith; the ancient prophets lived by faith; it is as necessary for us as for them. I believe what God has said will be fulfilled. I believe the Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants will be fulfilled, and all the promises and prophecies made by the faithful servants of God. When any man speaks as he is moved upon by the Holy Ghost, that is the word of God to the people; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, not one jot or tittle of the word of God will fall unfulfilled. I care not whether it be by His own voice out of the heavens; by the ministration of angels; by the voice of a prophet, or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost through His servants, it is the word of God to the people, it is truth and it will have its effect and fulfilment. Everything that has been communicated to us by revelation I believe to be true; many of them I know."
- ::Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p.166 (1869)
Works
See also
Smoot-Rowlett FamilyReferences
- Alexander, Thomas G. Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet
- Alexander, Thomas G. ''Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930", University of Illinois Press.
- Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen M. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Deseret Book Co., Salt Lake City, UT, 1976. ISBN 0-87747-594-6.
- Hardy, B. Carmon. "Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage", University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252018338.
- Ludlow, Daniel H., Editor. Church History, Selections from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, UT, 1992. ISBN 0-87579-924-8.
- Nibley, Preston. The Presidents of the Church. Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, UT, 1974. ISBN 0-87747-414-1.
- Quinn, D. Michael, "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904", Dialogue 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 9–105;
- Staker, Susan (editor). Waiting for World's End: The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff.
- VanWagoner, Richard S. "Mormon Polygamy: a History", Signature Books, ISBN 0941214796; ↑
External Links
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