In May of 1859, Wilford Woodruff traveled with his son Wilford Jr. and his son-in-law Robert Sholes up Harkers Canyon, searching for lumber to construct a farmhouse on Wilford’s farm located between 1600 and 1500 South in Salt Lake City.[1] Over a period of two days, wading through eight-foot-deep snow and mud, they cut down over three hundred “poles” and eighty “pine house logs” to be used for the new farmhouse. No longer the young man who had helped build Kirtland, Far West, and Nauvoo, at fifty-two years old Wilford noted that the work left him “cold,” “sore and stiff.”[2] But the men’s labor over the next year resulted in a comfortable home on Wilford’s farm that still stands today.
This farmhouse played a significant role in Wilford Woodruff’s life and was a site of harvests, celebrations and tragedies, family gatherings, and revelation. Events that played out within the walls of this home reverberated far beyond the simple frontier life of Wilford and his family and had an impact on the history of the Church.
Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, May 1859
A Place of Work and Independence
Between 1859 and 1862, Wilford continued to cultivate the twenty acres he owned around the farmhouse, primarily focused on producing goods for his family. He grew sugarcane, wheat, and fruit, in addition to raising livestock. His farm enabled him to provide for his family and be unfettered by financial dependence on the outside world. This was a necessity based on their isolated location, as well as a goal shared by many Latter-day Saints and their leaders, such as Wilford, who sought to anchor themselves to each other and to the Church instead. While Wilford and other Saints still sought to build economic relationships with non–Latter-day Saints, particularly those who were friendly towards the Saints, they did not want to become dependent.[3]
This focus on becoming economically independent became more urgent as Church leaders sought to prevent the exploitation of Latter-day Saints at the hands of merchants and businesses that increasingly looked to Utah Territory as a place to gain wealth following the Civil War. Some of these merchants in turn used their resources to push for harsher punishments against the Saints. As the transcontinental railroad neared, Latter-day Saint leaders including Wilford Woodruff encouraged the Saints to participate in home production and the cooperative movement.
A Place of Growth and Trial
Wilford Woodruff championed the value of home production and the co-ops throughout the three decades he called the farmhouse his home. But the farmhouse represented much more than that to him—it was also a place of joy and sorrow, of new life and goodbyes.
Wilford’s daughter Susan Cornelia and her husband, Robert Scholes, were the original occupants of the farmhouse for several years and helped with the farm.[4] In 1866 Wilford moved his seventh wife, Emma Woodruff, to the farmhouse with their children. Emma called this home for the majority of her married life and invested countless days of work to make the arid soil blossom as the rose. Emma and Wilford welcomed five children in the farmhouse, though they lost little Ann Thompson, who only lived seven hours and fifteen minutes after her birth. Wilford did not share details of the child’s death in his journal, though surely the mother and father were exhausted and devastated by the loss.[5]
While raising her children, Emma shared her home for a time with one of Wilford’s other wives, Delight, and her children. In his sixties, Wilford continued to work alongside his children and hired hands in tending to the crops and improving the land. Wilford also spent time with his families at the farm, in spite of the nearly constant stream of both religious and secular assignments.[6] Though not as quick as he had been in his younger years, he continued to be a strong worker, spent a great deal of time at the farm, and made the land around the farmhouse flourish.[7]
However, on September 25, 1873, Wilford’s mortality came clearly into view. When he went out in the fields near the farmhouse after a busy day in Salt Lake City, he had “a strange feeling” come over him and he hurried home. The “feeling” was likely a heart attack or stroke, and led Wilford to write, “I very soon felt as though I was struck with death and could not live. It seemed to be paralysis and death. I felt that I could not live an hour. All my blood, spirit, and life seemed to be leaving my limbs and closing around my heart and vitals and I felt as though I would soon die.”[8]
Wilford sent for his wife Phebe and his friend George Q. Cannon. He also asked for his neighbor William Wagstaff to administer a priesthood blessing to him, after which Wilford declared, “I was liberated instantaneously.”[9] In an era when the medical condition of a heart attack remained unclear, understudied, and untreatable, it was miraculous that Wilford rose from his bed at all.[10]
Wilford Woodruff, 1878, Salt Lake City, Utah
A Place of Faith and Revelation
Many years later, Wilford moved all of his possessions to the farmhouse after the death of his wife Phebe in November 1885.[11] For the next four years until Wilford was called as President of the Church, he made the farmhouse his main residence, though he was often forced to go into hiding as federal officials raided members’ homes, searching for those practicing polygamy. By 1887 he noted to his and Emma’s daughter Clara that he did not “expect to be able to visit the farmhouse much.” He noted, “Prudence would deprive me of this these times. The vigilance of our enemies will now be increased and I shall have to use great caution.”[12]
Yet his fears were soon alleviated when the new federal Marshal, Frank Dyer, informed Wilford that he would “leave him alone.” This was, in part, because Dyer wanted to strike a moderate stance and prosecute only those who contracted new plural marriages. Wilford was free, for the moment, to once again stay at his farm.[13]
Wilford Woodruff Farmhouse, 1880s
It was here that Wilford watched as the federal government intensified its persecution of the Latter-day Saints, forcing more men into hiding or prison and putting stress on countless families. Furthermore, federal officials were preparing to seize Church properties through the Edmunds–Tucker Act.
While at the farmhouse and pondering what to do regarding the federal government and plural marriage, Wilford received a revelation from the Lord counseling him to “pray for the Holy Spirit, which shall be given [the Presidency of my Church] to guide them in their acts.” Wilford likely took comfort knowing that the Lord promised to “hold the courts, with the officers of government, and the nation responsible for their acts towards the inhabitants of Zion.”[14] The Saints were counseled to continue the practice of plural marriage.
Seven months later, Wilford returned to the farmhouse after a long trip and was met with reports of increased hostilities against the Saints due to their continued practice of polygamy. The new federal receiver was determined not to honor the government’s 1888 agreement to exempt the temples from confiscation. On August 16, 1890, with the Territorial Court’s decision on the subject looming, Wilford declared, “We must do something to save our Temples.” The following month, Wilford recorded the following in his journal:
I have arrived at a point in the history of my life as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where I am under the necessity of acting for the temporal salvation of the Church. The United States government has taken a stand and passed laws to destroy the Latter-day Saints upon the subject of polygamy or patriarchal order of marriage. And after praying to the Lord and feeling inspired by his Spirit I have issued the following Proclamation which is sustained by my counselors and the 12 Apostles.[15]
His proclamation, the Manifesto, directed the ending of all new plural marriages in the Church. Wilford explained to the Saints, “I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me. . . . what would take place if we did not stop the practice.” As difficult as it was to understand, the Lord showed him in a vision that ending polygamy was the only way to ensure “the Prophets and Apostles and fathers [would remain] free men, and the temples [would remain] in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed.”[16] He must have spent many hours on his knees in the farmhouse seeking guidance from the Lord to understand His will concerning the temples and the future of the Church.
George Q. Cannon, a member of the First Presidency, recorded that Wilford Woodruff “felt strongly impelled to do what he has. . . . He has stated that the Lord had made plain to him that this was his duty, and he felt perfectly clear in his mind that it was the right thing.”[17]
First Presidency, April 6, 1893, Salt Lake City, Utah
For the rest of his life, Wilford Woodruff testified that the Savior had given additional revelation and guidance on the issue. Though he was willing to suffer anything the Lord asked him to pass through in order to continue plural marriage, he knew beyond a doubt that God had revealed the change. Wilford knew that the Lord had accepted the offering of the Saints and that God knew why the change needed to occur. As a result, the temple work for the living and the dead continued unabated as federal persecution of the Saints quieted. Millions on both sides of the veil were impacted as a result of the revelation given.[18]
The farmhouse remains today a historic site available to the public for tours. Though simple in many regards, this home stands as a testament to the faith and dedication of Wilford and his family. It was a place where Wilford spent over forty years of his life working the land and building his family. It was a place of new life, a place of death, a place of miracles and revelation where the Savior Jesus Christ aided His prophet in guiding the Church forward.
Hailing from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, Robert Swanson received his BA in History from Brigham Young University and his MA in History from Rutgers University–Camden, and he is currently a History PhD student at the University of Missouri focusing his work on abolitionism in the Early American Republic while still dabbling in Church history. He is married to his best friend, Bridget Garner Swanson, and they have two little girls who have made life even more of a fantastic adventure than they thought possible.
The Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation’s mission is to digitally preserve and publish Wilford Woodruff’s eyewitness account of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and make his records universally accessible in order to inspire all people, especially the rising generation, to study and to increase their faith in Jesus Christ. For more information, please explore wilfordwoodruffpapers.org.
Notes:
[1] Jennifer Ann Mackley, “Wilford Woodruff’s Homes,” http://www.wilfordwoodruff.info/p/wilford-woodruff-first-arrived-in-salt.html.
[2] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, May 19–20, 1859, p. 408, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/GZz7. Spelling and capitalization standardized.
[3] For Latter-day Saint economic history see: Leonard Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1966). For more on growth of the rest of the West see: Elliot West, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2023).
[4] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, July 26, 1860, p. 60, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/nZ37.
[5] Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1993), p. 225; Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 10–11, 1867, p. 72, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/DkQx; Jennifer Mackley, “Wilford Woodruff’s Wives: Emma Smith,” http://www.wilfordwoodruff.info/p/wilfords-wives.html. (Later Wilford’s brother Azmon died at the farmhouse as well. See Epistle to the YMMIA from Wilford Woodruff, February 1889, p. 1, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/OqQr.)
[6] For more on Emma Smith Woodruff see Jennifer Mackley, “Wilford Woodruff’s Wives: Emma Smith,” http://www.wilfordwoodruff.info/p/wilfords-wives.html; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), pp. 274–279.
[7] In 1874 Wilford put in six miles of fencing. See Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, September 29, 1874, p. 97, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/2vgM.
[8] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, September 25, 1873, p. 53, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/pQ2y.
[9] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, September 25, 1873, p. 53, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/pQ2y. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization standardized.
[10] “History of Heart Attack: Diagnosis and Understanding,” Heart Attack Prevention, University of Minnesota (2012), http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/essay/history-of-heart-attack-diagnosis-and-understanding/.
[11] Alexander, Things in Heaven, pp. 240–243.
[12] Letter from Wilford Woodruff to Clara Martisha Woodruff Beebee and Ovando Collins Beebe, ca. 1887, p. 1, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/m63r. Capitalization standardized.
[13] Alexander, Things in Heaven, p. 246.
[14] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, November 24, 1889, p. 279, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/79EG.
[15] Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, September 25, 1890, p. 328, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/Y719. Spelling and capitalization standardized.
[16] Official Declaration 1, Doctrine and Covenants.
[17] George Q. Cannon, Journal, September 24, 1890, The Journal of George Q. Cannon, Church Historian’s Press, https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/george-q-cannon/1890s/1890/09-1890#p84.
[18] “The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage,” Gospel Topics Essays, ChurchofJesusChrist.org; Jed Woodworth, “The Messenger and the Manifesto,” in Revelations in Context, ed. Matthew McBride and James Goldberg (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2016), https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/revelations-in-context/the-messenger-and-the-manifesto?lang=eng.
