New Links to CHP Publications in Wilford Woodruff’s Papers

Can’t get enough of documents from early church history? This year, supplement your study or research of church history with external scholarship. New connections are being made between the Wilford Woodruff Papers and Church Historian’s Press publications that are sure to interest readers of the Discourses of Eliza R. Snow, the Journals of George Q. Cannon, the Diaries of Emmeline B. Wells, and the Joseph Smith Papers.

The Wilford Woodruff Papers, an independent documentary editing project, shares a strong working relationship with the Church History Department. Many documents on the Woodruff Papers website were found in the Church History Library, including an additional 4,439 pages located last year.

In late 2024, that relationship was strengthened as the Wilford Woodruff Papers announced a new feature: links to CHP products in relevant documents in Wilford Woodruff’s papers. The November release included links to the Discourses of Eliza R. Snow and the Joseph Smith Papers, and a January 2025 release added links to the Journals of George Q. Cannon and the Diaries of Emmeline B. Wells.

Readers who come across Woodruff’s journal entry reporting his attendance at Eliza R. Snow’s surprise sixty-eighth birthday party can now be directed to Snow’s own remarks at the event. Similarly, researchers studying Woodruff’s experience at the solemn assembly for the seventh anniversary of the church will be linked directly to Joseph Smith’s discourse at the event.

Together, these different primary sources of the same event can support the event’s historicity and reveal differing perspectives. Because Wilford Woodruff’s journals span sixty-five years, they also illustrate how Latter-day Saints interpreted and built upon the teachings of past church leaders over time.

Church History Department staff are pleased to see the integration and interconnectedness of the different documents. Matthew C. Godfrey, a Joseph Smith Papers general editor and a volunteer Wilford Woodruff Foundation advisor, said, “To be able to take a day from Wilford Woodruff’s life and see what other luminaries in the church such as Emmeline B. Wells, George Q. Cannon, or Eliza R. Snow were doing provides a much richer picture of what was happening in the church and in the Great Basin. It can provide scholars with leads to additional information to illuminate different topics or events.”