Diarist and Historian
Many historians consider Woodruff's journals his most important contribution to LDS Church history. He kept a daily record of his life and activities within the LDS Church, beginning with his baptism in 1833. 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. These meticulous records provide insights into not only church doctrines and the daily actions of church leaders, but also into the social and cultural aspects of early Mormonism. Several significant actions and speeches of early church leaders are known only through these diaries.
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:
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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; 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. |
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Woodruff was an Assistant Church Historian between 1856 and 1883 and was the church's eleventh official Church Historian between 1883 and 1889.
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“Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.”
—W.R. (William Ralph)