Letter from Azubah Hart Woodruff, 20 March 1849
Burlington Iowa
Wilford & Phebe Woodruff
Dear friends Almost two years having elapsed since I
left you & the City of Saints & not having recieved one word from you as yet I
feel inclin'd to address a few lines to you as I have been won't to do in former days
but how unlike are my feelings on this occasion to what they formerly were when
addressing you by my pen I say unlike — & why should they not be — seperated from
my Companion & Partner in life with whom I have lived & shared the Joys &
sorrows attendant upon forty years by nearly two thousand Miles & without any
means of obtaining a knowlege of his situation as to body or mind or rather,
whether he is comfortable as to body comfortable contended & satisfied in mind
or not, & besides this a recollection of the scenes which I have witnessed since I
left my home in the East to Travel & mingle with the Saints of the last
Days or rather the recollections of many things which transpiered while I
was at the Bluffs or which were manifested towards me from time to time some
of which th'o small in their nature yet being attended with unfriendly, un-
charitable, & as I tho't, undue feelings towards me seems calculated in its
nature to obstruct those avenues from which flow the ready Ideas, the
sentiments of friendship & love & a full confidince of addressing
a congenial spirit yet I would not wish to be under stood by these
remarks that I indulge hard feelings towards you for I do not th'o
I thus speak I feel grateful & think I shall never foget the kind
attention I recieved from your hands while on our Journey from
the east as to the feelings which seemed to be most prevalent towards
me afterwards I impute in some degree to the mistaken Idea that
I was in favour of Mr Strangs claims but if this was in fact the case
I should think I had not improved much in the delusion if it be such for after
having been living with Son Webster & Eunice for nearly two years I have not yet
become a Strangite in principle or name. All the reasons I have given my friends
to think me wavering on this ground have been manifest in a want of a
disposition to oppose Eunice & her husband in their faith I felt it
my duty to give them a hearing as to the reasons they assign'd for pursuing
their present course & I must say that there were some things which app-
eared quite reasonable in relation to the subject still I did not get light
in mind on the subject sufficient to over ballance or vie with that which
