Wilford and Phebe Woodruff Lose a Daughter

When Wilford Woodruff left his wife, Phebe, and his daughter, Sarah Emma, for his first mission to Great Britain in 1839, Phebe was pregnant. During his travels to England he dreamed about his wife. On 28 November 1839 he related:


"[I] had a dream while upon my bed. And in my dream I saw Mrs. Woodruff, and notwithstanding we rejoiced much having an interview with each other, yet our embraces were mixed with sorrow for after conversing a while about her domestic affairs I asked where Sarah Emma was, our only child. She [said] weeping and kissing me, 'She is dead.' We sorrowed a moment and [then] I awoke. Phebe also said she had not received my letters. Is this dream true? Time must determine."

Nearly a year later on 26 November 1840, Wilford received several letters from Nauvoo, one from Sister Margaret Smoot and another from his beloved Phebe -- his dream had indeed been a warning. He noted, "The letters from Phebe and Sister Smoot gave an account of the death and burial of our oldest child Sarah Emma, who died July 17, 1840, being two years and three days old."
Phebe wrote to Wilford on the day following Sarah Emma's death:

"My dear Wilford, what will be your feelings, when I say that yesterday I was called to witness the departure of our little Sarah Emma from this world? Yes, she is gone. The relentless hand of death has snatched her from my embrace. But Ah! She was too lovely, too kind, too affectionate to live in this wicked world. When looking on her I have often thought how I should feel to part with her, I thought I could not live without her, especially in the absence of my companion. But she has gone."

Phebe continued, "Yes, Wilford we have one little angel in heaven, and I think likely her spirit has visited you before this time." Her description of the last days and moments of Sarah Emma's life must have caused tears to well up in her lonely companion's eyes. "She used to call her poor papa and putty papa many times in a day. She left a kiss for her papa with me just before she died."

The walk to the cemetery was quite hard for the young mother. "She had no relative to follow her to the grave or to shed a tear for her," Phebe wrote Wilford, "only her Ma and little Wilford [a son born while Wilford was gone]."

(Holzapfel, _Women of Nauvoo_, pp. 75-76)

(Compiled and written by David Kenison, Orem, Utah, dkenison@xmission.com)

A Son's Death and a Busy Father

David O. McKay related the following story as part of a funeral sermon he gave in 1943. Further details were supplied in the second account, from Harold B. Lee.

"One day in Salt Lake City a son kissed his mother good morning, took his dinner bucket, and went to City Creek Canyon where he worked. He was a switchman on the train that was carrying logs out of the canyon. Before noon his body was brought back lifeless. The mother was inconsolable. She could not be reconciled to that tragedy -- her boy just in his early twenties so suddenly taken away. The funeral was held, and words of consolation were spoken, but she was not consoled. She couldn't understand it.

"One forenoon, so she says, after her husband had gone to his office to attend to his duties as a member of the Presiding Bishopric, she lay in a relaxed state on the bed, still yearning and praying for some consolation. She said that her son appeared and said, "Mother, you needn't worry. That was merely an accident. I gave the signal to the engineer to move on, and as the train started, I jumped for the handle of the freight car, and my foot got caught in a sagebrush, and I fell under the wheel. I went to father soon after that, but he was so busy in the office I couldn't influence him -- I couldn't make any impression upon him, and I tried again. Today I come to you to give you that comfort and tell you that I am happy."

Well, you may not believe it. You may think she imagined it, but you can't make her think so, and you can't make that boy's father think it. I cite it today as an instance of the reality of the existence of intelligence and environment to which you and I are "dead," so to speak, as was this boy's father.
(David O. McKay, Gospel Ideals, pp. 525-6)

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Account from Harold B. Lee:

One of the General Authorities had a son working on the railroad that went up Emigration Canyon to the mines in the early days. This boy was found crushed to death under the train. He was working as a switchman. His mother had the feeling that someone had pushed him under the train and taken his life. When the services were held, she was not comforted. But after some weeks, the mother said this boy appeared to her. He said, "Mother, I've been trying to get to Father to tell him it was just an accident. I had thrown the switch and was running to catch on to the hand bars, but my foot tripped against a root at the side of a rail and I was thrown underneath the train. It was a pure accident. I've been trying to get to Father, but he's too busy at the office. I can't reach him." President McKay said, "Brethren, don't you get so busy at the office that spiritual forces are not able to reach you."
(Harold B. Lee, Relief Society Courses of Study, 1979-80, pp. 32-33)
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This further illustration comes from Pres. Ezra Taft Benson:
President David O. McKay and President Harold B. Lee used to relate an incident from the life of Bishop John Wells that is instructive to all of us. Bishop Wells was a great detail man and was responsible for many Church reports.

A son of Bishop and Sister Wells was killed in a railroad accident on October 15, 1915. He was run over by a freight car. Sister Wells could not be consoled. She received no comfort during the funeral and continued her mourning after her son was laid to rest. Bishop Wells feared for her health, as she was in a state of deep anguish.

One day, soon after the funeral, Sister Wells was lying on her bed in a state of mourning. The son appeared to her and said, "Mother, do not mourn, do not cry. I am all right."

He then related to her how the accident took place. Apparently there had been some question - even suspicion - about the accident because the young man was an experienced railroad man. But he told his mother that it was clearly an accident.

Now note this: He also told her that as soon as he realized that he was in another sphere, he had tried to reach his father but could not. His father was so busy with the details of his office and work that he could not respond to the promptings. Therefore, the son had come to his mother.
He then said, "Tell Father that all is well with me, and I want you not to mourn any more." (See David O. McKay, Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, pp. 525-26.)
President McKay and President Lee used this experience to teach that we must always be responsive to the whisperings of the Spirit. These promptings most often come when we are not under the pressure of appointments and when we are not caught up in the worries of day-to-day life.

(Ezra Taft Benson, "Seek the Spirit of the Lord," Ensign, Apr. 1988, p. 2)

President Spencer W. Kimball's Vision of His Father

"I have had few dreams which had meaning. Of the thousands through the years, most have passed out of mind with the dawn, but this was different. I stood in the room with other people around me, then I saw him. Father was a handsome person, tall, with dark piercing eyes and a commanding appearance. And there he was, not as a vague apparition, but so real and so like himself. I called out "Oh! Father, Father, it is so good to see you." 

He had a radiant smile such as he had had in life. It warmed me. I was pulsating with gladness. I could not understand why others could not see him, he was so clear and distinct and pleasing. "Oh, my beloved father!" Then he seemed to be moving away. He had been only an arm's length from me. He faded out of the picture and was gone. I awakened and lay reliving the dream or vision again and again. I did not want it to pass from my memory. I went to my desk and wrote it in my journal and went back to bed, lying quietly in the darkness musing, reliving the hallowed experience. 

"So vivid it was that I felt sure it had some meaning. I am not sure for what purpose it was given to me. Many times in years gone by I have wondered if either my father or mother would some day come to me; I knew they must be proud of the position given me and the honor which had come to them. And, so, I have been grateful through the year [since the dream] for that sweet moment. If it did nothing more for me than to more completely connect mortality with the life beyond, it served a good purpose.

"As I have contemplated these months the exquisite joy which came to me in a reunion with my earthly father, I came to anticipate with infinitely greater happiness the possible meeting of my Lord and Savior and our Eternal Father. And there began to bear in upon me the feeling expressed in the song I have sung so many times, "O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" Somehow after this, the future, whatever it was, did not look so bleak and nebulous. There settled down over me a comfort and a peace which, except in a few weak moments, has never left me."

 (57-04)  (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, edited by Edward L. Kimball [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], 43.)

Joseph Smith teaches about Children in the Resurrection

The spirits of our children are immortal before they come to us, and their spirits, after bodily death, are like they were before they came. They are as they would have appeared if they had lived in the flesh, to grow to maturity, or to develop their physical bodies to the full stature of their spirits. If you see one of your children that has passed away it may appear to you in the form in which you would recognize it, the form of childhood; but if it came to you as a messenger bearing some important truth, it would perhaps come as the spirit of Bishop Edward Hunter's son (who died when a little child) came to him, in the stature of full-grown manhood, and revealed himself to his father, and said: "I am your son."

Bishop Hunter did not understand it. He went to my father and said: "Hyrum, what does that mean? I buried my son when he was only a little boy, but he has come to me as a full-grown man -- a noble, glorious, young man, and declared himself my son. What does it mean?"

Father (Hyrum Smith, the Patriarch) told him that the Spirit of Jesus Christ was full-grown before he was born into the world; and so our children were full-grown and possessed their full stature in the spirit, before they entered mortality, the same stature that they will possess after they have passed away from mortality, and as they will also appear after the resurrection, when they shall have completed their mission.

Joseph Smith taught the doctrine that the infant child that was laid away in death would come up in the resurrection as a child; and, pointing to the mother of a lifeless child, he said to her: "You will have the joy, the pleasure, and satisfaction of nurturing this child, after its resurrection, until it reaches the full stature of its spirit." There is restitution, there is growth, there is development, after the resurrection from death. I love this truth. It speaks volumes of happiness, of joy and gratitude to my soul. Thank the Lord he has revealed these principles to us.

Catherine Curtis Spencer's Faith in Suffering

Orson and Catherine Spencer met in Massachusetts and married, moved to Nauvoo in 1840. There they reared their family of 6 children and received Temple ordinances from Joseph Smith, before the eventual persecution caused them to flee the city during the winter of 1846. NOTE - a previous Church History Story in this series, number 5, also described the events of Catherine Spencer's death and told about her posterity, which included Aurelia Spencer Rogers, founder of the Primary.

Orson Spencer was a graduate from an eastern college, who having studied for the ministry, became a popular preacher in the Baptist Church. Meeting with a Mormon elder, he became acquainted with the teachings of Joseph Smith and accepted them. Before doing so, however, he and his highly educated young wife counted the cost, laid their hearts on the altar and made the sacrifice! How few realize what it involved to become a Mormon in those early days! Home, friends, occupation, popularity, all that makes life pleasant, were gone. Almost overnight they were strangers to their own kindred.

After leaving Nauvoo, his wife, ever delicate and frail, sank rapidly under the ever accumulating hardships. The sorrowing husband wrote imploringly to the wife's parents, asking them to receive her into their home until the Saints should find an abiding place. The answer came, "Let her renounce her degrading faith and she can come back, but never until she does."

When the letter was read to her, she asked her husband to get his Bible and to turn to the book of Ruth and read the first chapter, sixteenth and seventeenth verses: "Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."

Not a murmur escaped her lips. The storm was severe and the wagon covers leaked. Friends held milk pans over her bed to keep her dry. In those conditions, in peace and without apparent suffering, the spirit took its flight and her body was consigned to a grave by the wayside.

(Compiled and written by David Kenison)