[Elsie]

Woodruff's large collection of diaries provides an important record of Latter Day Saint history, and his decision to formally end the practice of plural marriage among the members of the LDS Church in 1890 brought to a close one of the most difficult periods of church history.    

 

Like many early Latter Day Saints, Woodruff practiced plural marriage. 

His wives were:

• Phoebe Whittemore Carter (born March 8, 1807 – died 1885), m. 13 April 1837
• Mary Ann Jackson, m. 15 April 1846 (divorced in 1848)
• Emma Smoot Smith (1838–1911), m. 13 March 1853     <----+  Must have been an 'interesting' honeymoon!
• Sarah Brown (1834–1909), m. 13 March 1853   <------------+
• Sarah Delight Stocking (1838–1907), m. 1857^[3]

 

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.

 

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 contemporaneously. However, in his Comprehensive History of the Church, 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.[21]

”

Woodruff was an Assistant Church Historian between 1856 and 1883 and was the church's eleventh official Church Historian between 1883 and 1889.

 

 

 

 

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilford_Woodruff

 

 

 

[Elsie]

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 so are WE!