While upon this mission, on March 22, 1840, a son, Wilford Woodruff Jr., was born. At this writing he is living, and is a faithful worker in the Salt Lake Temple. Upon leaving Herefordshire in June, 1840, to attend the Manchester conference, Wilford comments: "I never before left a field of labor with as much satisfaction with the results of my work; I felt to render unto God the gratitude of my heart for giving me so many souls as seals to my ministry; and I note the remarkable fact that I had been led by the spirit (only a little more than three months before) through a densely populated country for eighty miles, and chose no part of it for my field of labor until I was led by the Lord to the house of John Benbow, at Frome's Hill, where I preached for the first time on the 5th of March, 1840; now, on the 22nd of June, I was going to the Manchester conference, to represent this fruitful field of my labors with thirty-three organized churches numbering 541 members, 300 of whom received the ordinance of baptism under my hands." In that labor, attended with such unprecedented success in this dispensation, he never, for a moment, felt to take honor to himself; yet with characteristic humility and meekness he failed not to make honorable mention of the labor of other brethren who came to assist him. For instance, of Presidents Brigham Young and Willard Richards he writes: "Elder Brigham Young labored with me in this vineyard about one month; from him the Saints and I received much benefit, for he is mighty in counsel, and is endowed with much wisdom. Elder Willard Richards had labored with me two months, and was also a great blessing to us, for he had passed through a notable school of experience and learned much wisdom, and his {150} sound judgment was very manifest in the councils and conferences in which we had acted together." At that time the British mission numbered forty-one branches of the Church, with 2,513 members, the local officers including 56 elders, 126 priests, 61 teachers, and 13 deacons; 842 members had been the increase in the preceding three months. It was about this time that a local elder who was in the British army was ordered with his regiment to India, where he went in good spirits, determined to carry the gospel to that land, he being the first to do so. At this time Wilford also notes in his journal the death of Bishop Edward Partridge, and makes this comment: "Bishop Partridge was one of the wisest and best men of the last generation. Like Nathaniel of old, in him there was no guile. He had passed through much persecution with the Saints, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus."