Wilford Woodruff Sr. (March 1, 1807September 2, 1898) was an American religious leader who served as the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1889 until his death. He ended the public practice of plural marriage among members of the LDS Church in 1890.
Woodruff joined the Latter Day Saint church after studying Restorationism as a young adult. He met Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement in Kirtland, Ohio, before joining Zion's Camp in April 1834. He stayed in Missouri as a missionary, preaching in Arkansas and Tennessee before returning to Kirtland. He married his first wife, Phebe, that year and served a mission in New England. Smith called Woodruff to be a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in July 1838, and he was ordained in April 1839. Woodruff served a mission in England from August 1839 until April 1841, leading converts from England to Nauvoo. Woodruff was away promoting Smith's presidential campaign at the time of Smith's death. After returning to Nauvoo, he and Phebe traveled to England, where Woodruff preached and supported local members. The Woodruffs returned to the United States just before the Saints were driven out of Nauvoo, and Woodruff oversaw forty families in Winter Quarters, where he was sealed to his first plural wives. He joined the advance company that traveled to the Salt Lake Valley without his family in 1847. After returning to Winter Quarters, Woodruff and Phebe left to preside over the Eastern States Mission.
Woodruff and his family arrived in Salt Lake City on October 15, 1850. He served in the Utah territorial legislature and was heavily involved in the social and economic life of his community. He worked as an Assistant Church Historian and as Church Historian from 1856 to 1889. He was married to three more wives between 1852 and 1853. In 1877, he became president of the St. George Temple, where endowment ordinances were first performed for the dead as well as the living. Woodruff helped standardize the temple ceremony and decreed that church members could act as proxy for anyone they could identify by name. He also ended sealings of members to unrelated priesthood holders. In 1882, Woodruff went into hiding to avoid arrest for unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Act. In 1889, Woodruff became the fourth president of the LDS Church. After government disenfranchisement of polygamists and women in Utah Territory and seizure of church properties, which threatened to extend to temples, Woodruff ended the church's official support of new polygamous marriages in the 1890 Manifesto. Woodruff died in 1898 and his detailed journals provide an important record of Latter Day Saint history.
Early years and conversion Woodruff was one of four sons born to Beulah Thompson and Aphek Woodruff. Beulah died of "spotted fever" in 1808 at the age of 26, when Wilford was fifteen months old. Aphek married Azubah Hart in 1809. In 1826, Aphek lost his mill and moved from Northington (now Avon, Connecticut) to Farmington, Connecticut. Woodruff attended school until he was 18 years old, which was unusual at the time. He survived having typhus and numerous accidents. At age 20, Woodruff left home to manage a flour mill for his aunt, and after three years, operated mills for other people until moving to Richland, New York, with his brother, Azmon, in 1832. During his time as a mill operator, he studied religion and became interested in Restorationism. Woodruff had his local Baptist minister, Mr. Phippen, baptize him without making him a member of the local congregation. Woodruff joined Smith's original Church of Christ on December 31, 1833. He was impressed with how the missionaries (Zerah Pulsipher and Elijah Cheney) preached their message voluntarily and free of charge, and how they purported to heal the sick.
Zion's Camp and mission Woodruff left his home in Richland after members recruited him to join Zion's Camp in April 1834. He met prominent church leaders, including Joseph Smith, in Kirtland, Ohio, before leaving with Zion's Camp for Missouri in May. When Zion's Camp left Missouri, Woodruff stayed to help members in Clay County, Missouri. He was ordained as a priest in 1834 and volunteered to serve a mission. After donating all his belongings to the church, Woodruff left Kirtland on January 12, 1835, preaching without "purse or scrip" in Arkansas and Tennessee. Woodruff's original companion was Harry Brown, who later left Woodruff to return to his family in Kirtland. Most of the mission, Woodruff preached in small towns and villages in western Kentucky and Tennessee and supported new members there. Warren Parrish ordained Woodruff as an elder in June 1835, and Woodruff heard in February 1836 that Smith had called him as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy.
Woodruff was dedicated to the Latter Day Saint Church, which distanced him from his family, who did not believe in the church. He returned to Kirtland in November 1836, where he studied Latin and Greek grammar at the Kirtland School, a school for adult education, which met in the attic of the Kirtland Temple. In January 1837, Smith called Woodruff to join the First Quorum of the Seventy. Three months later, over a period of five days, he participated in washing and anointings in the Kirtland Temple, accompanied by prolonged fasting, prayer and Charismatic experiences, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy.
Marriage and family Like many early Latter-day Saints, Woodruff practiced plural marriage. Woodruff was married to ten women in total, although not at the same time. His first wife, Phebe, stated that she thought plural marriage was "the most wicked thing I ever heard of", but she eventually embraced it.
His wives: Phebe Whittemore Carter (March 8, 1807 – November 10, 1885), m. April 13, 1837 Mary Ann Jackson (February 18, 1818 – October 25, 1894) m. April 15, 1846, or August 2, 1846 (divorced in 1848 but resealed in 1878) Sarah Elinor Brown (August 22, 1827 – December 25, 1915) m. August 2, 1846 (divorced after 3 weeks) Mary Caroline Barton (January 12, 1829 – August 10, 1910) m. August 2, 1846 (divorced after 3 weeks) Mary Meek Giles Webster (September 6, 1802 – October 3, 1852) m. March 28, 1852 (died 7 months after sealing) Clarissa Henrietta Hardy (November 20, 1834 - September 3, 1903) m. April 20, 1852 (divorced in 1853) Emma Smith (March 1, 1838 – March 4, 1912) m. March 13, 1853 Sarah Brown (January 1, 1834 – May 9, 1909), m. March 13, 1853 Sarah Delight Stocking (July 26, 1838 – May 28, 1906) m. July 31, 1857 Eudora Young Dunford (May 12, 1852 – October 21, 1921) m. March 10, 1877 (divorced in 1879)
Six of Woodruff's wives bore him a total of 34 children, with three wives and 14 children preceding him in death.
Woodruff met his first wife, Phebe Carter, in Kirtland shortly after his return from his first mission through Southern Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Woodruff came to Kirtland on November 25, 1836, along with Abraham O. Smoot. He was introduced to Phebe by Milton Holmes on January 28, 1837. She was a native of Maine and had become a Latter Day Saint in 1834. Woodruff and Phebe were married on April 13, 1837, with the ceremony performed by Frederick G. Williams. Their marriage was later sealed in Nauvoo by Hyrum Smith. Due to a loss of records, this ordinance was later repeated by Heber C. Kimball in Salt Lake City in 1853. Phebe accompanied her husband on his 1837–1838 mission to the Fox Islands in Maine. During some of this time, she resided with her parents in their house in Maine. She headed west with her husband shortly after the birth of their daughter, despite her reluctance to leave home.
During their journey west, Phebe became deathly ill. She frequently slipped into unconsciousness starting on December 2, 1838. Phebe reported that she conversed with two angels who gave her the choice to live or die. They said that she could choose to live if she would accept the responsibility of supporting her husband in all of his future work for the Lord; she chose to live and persevere with the faithful. She recovered after receiving a blessing from Woodruff. Her firstborn child died of a respiratory infection in 1840 while Woodruff was on a mission in England. Phebe was among the members of the Relief Society in Nauvoo. In the late 1840s, Phebe was set apart as a missionary and served with Woodruff as he presided over the Eastern States Mission. Phebe was later numbered among the "leading ladies" who helped organize the Relief Society in Utah Territory in the 1860s through the 1880s. She was also a key figure behind the Indignation Meeting of 1870 that was an important step in the women of Utah being granted the right to vote.
Woodruff's second marriage to Mary Ann Jackson ended in divorce a year after their son, James, was born in 1847. Woodruff's third and fourth marriages ended in divorce only three weeks after their sealing, after the two young women started dating men their own age. In 1852, Woodruff married Mary Giles Meeks Webster and Clarissa Henrietta Hardy, but Mary died that same year and Clarissa divorced him a year later. In 1853, he was sealed to two more women, Emma Smith, age 15, and Sarah Brown, age 19. Sarah bore a son the following year, but Emma did not bear any children until she was 19. Emma's first child died at age 13 months, and her fourth child, born in 1867, died soon after birth. In 1857, Brigham Young sealed Sarah Delight Stocking to Woodruff. Delight's third child died as an infant in 1869. In 1877, Young sealed his daughter, Eudora Lovina Young Dunford, to Woodruff. Their child died a few hours after birth in 1878. Although Woodruff and Mary Ann Jackson were divorced, he provided a home for her and sent money to her to support her and their son, James. James came to live with Woodruff as a young man in 1863. Among Woodruff's children was church apostle Abraham O. Woodruff. Woodruff's daughter Phebe was sealed as a wife to Lorenzo Snow in 1859.
During Woodruff's time as president of the LDS Church, his wife Emma Smith Woodruff accompanied him to public functions, and she was the only wife he lived with after Phebe's death in 1885. She was a niece of Abraham O. Smoot. Although she married Woodruff, then age 46, when she was 15, she did not have the first of her eight children until she was 19. Emma was involved in the Relief Society, serving as both a ward and stake president for that organization. She also served as a member of the Relief Society General Board from 1892 to 1910. Woodruff spent more time with Emma's children than his children from other wives. He corresponded most frequently with Emma's and Phebe's children, giving them advice on living a virtuous life and saving money. He built homes for his wives, and he sent money to his wives and children, probably based on their individual needs.
In the 1880s, Woodruff met Lydia Mary Olive Mamreoff von Finkelstien Mountford, who grew up Christian in Jerusalem. Woodruff and Mountford became friends, and she spent time with Woodruff's family at their summer home. While historian D. Michael Quinn and others have speculated that Mountford was sealed to Woodruff as a plural wife in 1897, there is no evidence for it. According to Thomas G. Alexander, Mountford was away giving lectures in California while Woodruff was in Oregon at the time that Quinn postulated they were sealed.
Missionary work and work as an apostle Mission in the east and England; ordination as apostle