Wilford Woodruff, Fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: History of His Life and Labors, as Recorded in His Daily JournalsWoodruff, Wilford
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Wilford Woodruff, Fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: History of His Life and Labors, as Recorded in His Daily Journals
Woodruff, Wilford
Woodruff, Wilford, 1807-1898
On the 12th of April he started a company of Saints for Zion. There
were 71 all told, 50 of whom were from Philadelphia. From Philadelphia
he visited Saints in the neighboring towns. At Hornerstown he baptized
three members of the Woolf family. They had been believers for a number
of years, having been visited by the Prophet and a number of the
Twelve. Leaving Pennsylvania he traveled through New Jersey to New York
where he met T. D. Brown, just returning from England. From New York he
went on to Cambridgeport to his family.
After journalizing the calamities occurring in St. Louis, New Orleans,
California, and other parts of the world, Elder Woodruff started on a
visit to Fox Islands where he had introduced the gospel twelve years
before, having baptized nearly one hundred people. He passed many weeks
on the Islands but with much less success than upon the first mission
there. From here he went to New Brunswick, Canada, performing a large
part of the {338} journey on foot. One day he walked 35 miles, carrying
a heavy load part of the distance.
Arriving at the ferry of Beauburs Island, he crossed in a boat and
walked a mile through a pleasant grove to the home of Elder Joseph
Russell, who for eleven years had been the owner of the entire island,
which is a mile and a half in length, by a half a mile in width. Elder
Russell was a ship-builder and had constructed 23 ships with a tonnage
of 650 tons each. He was a man of considerable wealth, worth at that
time, at a low estimate, $30,000. He was liberal with his means and
faithful in the discharge of his duties to the Church. At that place
there was a small branch of the Church over which he presided.
On the 28th he went with Elder Russell and son to Bedque. While here
he received word that Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, and Franklin D.
Richards had been chosen members of the Twelve Apostles.
On the 5th of August, Elder Woodruff set out upon his return to
Cambridgeport, Elder Russell having first contributed $1,500 with which
to aid the Church in its newly chosen home. He remained but a short
time at home, when he started for Fall River and New Bedford to visit
the Saints in those places. On his return from his trip to the South,
he met at Cambridgeport, Dr. John M. Bernhisel, who, after giving an
account of affairs in the Valleys, informed Elder Woodruff that he had
come to Washington as our representative, bearing a petition for a
Territorial Government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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