Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) was born in Connecticut and joined the LDS Church as a young man. He went through the trials of the early members of the LDS Church and came to Utah with the body of the Saints. In 1887 he became the fourth president of the LDS Church. His administration is best remembered for publishing the Manifesto which announced the ending of plural marriage which had previously been openly practiced by members of the Church.
Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) was born in Connecticut and joined the LDS Church as a young man. He went through the trials of the early members of the LDS Church and came to Utah with the body of the Saints. In 1887 he became the fourth president of the LDS Church. His administration is best remembered for publishing the Manifesto which announced the ending of plural marriage which had previously been openly practiced by members of the Church.
One led our country through the Civil War and out of slavery. The other founded a religious movement that is today the nation's fastest-growing Christian denomination. So what could Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Smith possibly have in common? According to Lincoln Leadership Society president Ron Andersen, more than you would think. Besides both being hardworking and hardly educated, Lincoln and Smith also held surprisingly comparable and unpopular views on slavery and the nature of God. But the most striking similarities between the two men are uncovered in historical records in Illinois, where each was living and gaining critical momentum in the 1840s. You'll see new sides to these important historical figures as you discover Smith's stance on the abolition movement or Lincoln's vouch for the Mormon vote. Find out how two young "backwoods" boys crossed paths and led parallel lives before each was martyred for his cause in this exhaustively researched dual biography.
Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) was born in Connecticut and joined the LDS Church as a young man. He went through the trials of the early members of the LDS Church and came to Utah with the body of the Saints. In 1887 he became the fourth president of the LDS Church. His administration is best remembered for publishing the Manifesto which announced the ending of plural marriage which had previously been openly practiced by members of the Church.
When Wilford Woodruff converted to the LDS church in 1833, he joined a millenarian group of a few thousand persecuted believers clustered around Kirtland, Ohio. When he died sixty-five years later in 1898, he was the leader of more than a quarter-million followers worldwide.
For the first time in a single volume, Jennifer Mackley chronicles the development of temple doctrine and ceremonies over the course of the nineteenth century: from washings and anointings to proxy baptisms, the endowment to plural marriage sealings, the first rebaptism to the last priesthood adoption. After Wilford Woodruff's conversion in 1833, he enthusiastically participated in the ordinances the Prophet Joseph Smith introduced in Kirtland and Nauvoo. However, Joseph was murdered before the implications of the "higher ordinances" could be fully understood, and before their administration in the temple could begin. Learn why Wilford believed that if revelation had ceased with Joseph Smith's death, the mission of Elijah would have failed. Through Wilford's own words--as preserved in his letters, discourses, and journals--find out what led him to seek additional revelation, make changes to some ordinances, and suspend or discontinue others. What did Wilford announce in 1894 that rewrote the nature of temple work? The temple ordinances were central to Wilford Woodruff's faith in the restored Church. Are they still important today?
Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women’s periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women’s History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women—journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records—to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories. Mormon Women’s History presents women as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death, mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration, establishing “civilization” in a wilderness, and missionizing both to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging professional identities, and developing ritualization and sacralization of lived religion. The stories, experiences, and examples explored in Mormon Women’s History are neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways that Mormon women’s history can move beyond individual lives to enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
