being constitutional? 9. What was the Edmunds Bill? 10. How
was it enforced? 11. What was the Edmunds-Tucker Law? 12. When and where
did President Taylor die?
CHAPTER XXXVI.
PRESIDENCY OF WILFORD WOODRUFF.
At the April conference, 1889, the First Presidency was again organized.
Wilford Woodruff was chosen president and he called the former counselors
to act also with him. President Woodruff was eighty-two years old when this
high calling was placed upon him, but he was still quite strong and
active. His life had been devoted to God and his cause. He joined the
Church in 1833, so you see he had been with it from the beginning. He had
been an Apostle for fifty years. It will give you an idea of how busy
President Woodruff had been when you are told that from 1834 to 1895 he had
traveled through twenty-eight States of the Union, three of the countries
of Europe, and six islands of the sea. He had held 7,555 meetings, preached
3,526 discourses, organized fifty-one branches of the Church, besides doing
a great deal of other work in the Church.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT WILFORD WOODRUFF.]
President George Q. Cannon, first counselor in the presidency, came with
his father's family from England to Nauvoo in the year 1842, and from that
time had been an active worker in the Church. In 1850 he, in company with
other missionaries, went to the Sandwich Islands. Here Elder Cannon
translated the Book of Mormon into the native language, and sometime after
he had it printed. He labored as an editor and a publisher of Church papers
in San Francisco, in Liverpool, and at home with the _Deseret News_. In
1860 he was ordained an Apostle. In 1866 he began to publish the _Juvenile
Instructor_. He spent many years in Washington as delegate from Utah.
President Cannon was the General Superintendent of Sunday Schools to the
time of his death.
The second counselor in the presidency, Joseph F. Smith, was born November
13, 1838, in Far West, Missouri, a few days after the time when his father
Hyrum Smith was taken by the mob and ordered to be shot. As a nine-year-old
boy he drove his mother's yoke of cattle across the plains with an emigrant
train. President Smith has filled many missions to Europe, to the Sandwich
Islands and to various parts of the United States.
He was ordained as one of the Twelve Apostles July 1, 1866.
During the first few years that Wilford Woodruff was president of the
Church, the persecution against
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