2 Post-Manifesto Polygamy

Helen Mar, and Rhoda — and Owen was buried near his father and mother, Wilford and Emma Woodruff. At the Woodruffs’ original memorial service on June 26, 1904, Seymour B. Young, then president of the First Council of the Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), said he “hoped that at some future time the couple could be brought back home and reunited with loved ones.” The Woodruffs’ reunion in the Salt Lake City Cemetery in 1993 paralleled a reunion of the family artifacts — letters, journals, and autobiographies — now preserved at Brigham Young University’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections as the Abraham Owen Woodruff Collection. These artifacts provide firsthand accounts of Owen and his wives, Helen Winters and Avery Clark, as post-Manifesto polygamists and demonstrate some of the personal effects of plural marriage. This essay focuses mainly on the correspondence between Helen, Owen, and Avery. The eighty-five-letter Woodruff Correspondence includes Helen’s thirty-two typed and handwritten letters to Owen and his five to her; Owen’s thirty-one typed and handwritten letters to Avery and her nine to him; Avery’s four letters to both Owen and Helen, her two letters to Helen, and Helen’s two letters to Avery. This collection spans