He met Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement in Kirtland, Ohio, before joining Zion's Camp in April 1834.

He was impressed with how the missionaries (Zerah Pulsipher and Elijah Cheney) preached their message voluntarily and free of charge, and how they purported to heal the sick.

[10] Three months later, over a period of five days, he participated in washing and anointings in the Kirtland Temple, accompanied by prolonged fasting and prayer and Charismatic experiences, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy.

[18] Woodruff met his first wife, Phebe Carter, in Kirtland shortly after his return from his first mission through Southern Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

[13] Woodruff's third and fourth marriages ended in divorce only three weeks after their sealing, after the two young women started dating men their own age.

[37] Although Phebe did not accompany him on all of his journeys over the next year and a half, she stayed at various locations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine—locations that he, to some extent, made his base of operations.

Woodruff supervised the physical printing of the paper, and he and John Taylor also published a general interest newspaper called Nauvoo Neighbor, starting in May 1843.

He joined the other apostles in a trip to the East Coast to raise funds for a temple and hotel under construction in Nauvoo, setting out in July 1843 and returning in November 1843.

[55] Woodruff worked to square the mission account books and visited wards and branches throughout the United Kingdom, establishing the authority of the apostles after Smith's death.

[80] He served a "home mission" to reactivate lapsed members and call them to repentance, preaching for a renewed commitment to religion throughout the Mormon Reformation.

[82] During this time there were no public worship services in Salt Lake City, and Woodruff and the other members of the Twelve Apostles organized groups of priesthood holders that met regularly to pray and preach to one another.

Under the direction of Brigham Young, Woodruff was key in implementing endowments for the dead in the temple, in standardizing the ceremonies, and in giving various sermons to encourage broader understanding of the program.

[95] Woodruff accepted Brigham Young's daughter Eudora as a plural wife in 1877; their union produced a son who died shortly after birth.

Woodruff also compiled lists of notable men and women, for whom he performed vicarious temple work with the help of Lucy Bigelow Young.

A new Supreme Court ruling required the federal government to provide positive evidence of polygamy before convicting the husband, and Woodruff could appear in public again until the 1882 when the Edmunds Act was passed.

[100] The Edmunds Act outlawed unlawful cohabitation, which was easier to prove than polygamy, and church leadership advised men in polygamous marriages to live in one house with one wife.

[104] After the death of John Taylor in July 1887, Woodruff assumed leadership of the church as the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Other members of the Quorum took this opportunity to raise grievances against Cannon, stating that he had defended his son John Q. too vigorously during his excommunication, to the point of hiding his crimes.

The two men moved to Arlington, Virginia, under false names, seeking to persuade Republican congressmen to support Utah's bid for statehood in 1888.

Judges cited a disdain for federal law, pointing to doctrines such as blood atonement and temple vows as reported from former members to avenge the government for Joseph Smith's death.

Henry W. Lawrence replaced Marshal Dyer and threatened to confiscate the temples in Logan, Manti, and St. George, as they were not used for public worship.

[31] Woodruff further clarified in hearings about confiscated church property that men with plural wives should "cease associating with them", though Joseph F. Smith and Lorenzo Snow did not make such strong statements.

[114] Law professor[115] Kenneth L. Cannon II states that Woodruff's intent with the 1890 Manifesto was to stop the creation of more plural marriages but allow existing ones to continue.

[116] The judge in the hearing decided not to return confiscated property to the church, stating that while the practice of polygamy may have stopped, it was still taught as part of the religion.

[118] Despite the manifesto, some Mormon historians have asserted that Woodruff continued to secretly allow new plural marriages to be performed in Mexico, Canada, and upon the high seas.

[129] The church also supported local industries like coal and iron mining, the Saltair resort, and the state's first hydroelectric generating facility.

Thatcher had issues with chronic ulcers and a morphine addiction, and in the rare times when he was in good health, he often failed to attend meetings.

[141] In his Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, B. H. Roberts wrote that Woodruff's record was a "priceless" documentary of the discourses of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

[142] Woodruff's diaries are featured prominently in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870.

[153] In January 1880, he received a revelation referred to as the "Wilderness Prophecy", which stated that enemies of the church would be destroyed before Christ's Second Coming and reaffirmed the importance of temples.