Abraham Owen Woodruff (November 23, 1872 – June 20, 1904) was an American missionary who was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was also the son of LDS Church president Wilford Woodruff.
Owen Woodruff was born near Salt Lake City, Utah Territory and grew up working on his family's farm. Then, as a young man, he attended the Latter Day Saints' College and obtained a job at the Zion's Saving Bank and Trust Company. After serving a mission in Germany, he was ordained an apostle at the relatively young age of 24. In this capacity, he traveled throughout the Intermountain West, Canada, and Mexico, attending stake conferences of the church and identifying areas for potential Mormon colonies. Woodruff played a major role in the establishment of a Latter-day Saint settlement at Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. During one of his trips to Wyoming in 1901, he met and married his second wife, thus practicing plural marriage eleven years after his father issued the 1890 Manifesto that ended polygamy as an official practice of the church. Woodruff contracted smallpox while visiting his second wife in the Mormon colonies in Mexico and died in 1904 at the age of 31.
Early life
On November 23, 1872, Woodruff was born just south of Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff and Emma Smith Woodruff. He was the sixth of eight children. His mother was the second plural wife of Wilford Woodruff and the niece of Abraham O. Smoot, after whom Woodruff was named. On May 3, 1881, he was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended Brigham Young's funeral as a child. Woodruff's childhood home was a log house on the Woodruff homestead that his father had established after traveling across the Great Plains as a Mormon pioneer. During his young life, Woodruff helped out on the family farm; "he learned to hoe corn, plant and do general farm work." By the time he was ten, his job was to herd cows. He also sold watercress from Liberty Park in Salt Lake City for pocket money. He spent his free time fishing and hunting. He attended the local public schools and did well in his math classes. When the U.S. Congress passed the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, Woodruff's father (Wilford Woodruff) went into hiding, seeking to avoid arrest for practicing plural marriage. Then, when Woodruff was fifteen years old, his father became president of the church.
After graduating from the 40th District school, Woodruff attended Latter-day Saints' College. Here, he studied under James E. Talmage and Karl G. Maeser for five years. Upon completion of his studies in 1891, Woodruff was hired to work at the Zion's Saving Bank and Trust Company. He was 18 years old. He worked as a collector before being promoted to assistant bookkeeper.
Missionary years
In 1893, at age 21, Woodruff was called to the Swiss–German Mission. Around this time, his father's health had begun to deteriorate, which made Woodruff's departure a difficult matter; but his father encouraged him to go, so he left for Europe. He was assigned to preach first in the city of Frankfurt, Germany. At the outset of his mission, he studied the German language with the help of his host family, often for two hours a day. After a few months, he found a few people who wished to be baptized. Woodruff was then moved from Frankfurt to the city of Dresden, where he served as branch president. After preaching in Dresden, his last assignment was in Berlin. Here, Woodruff endured persecution against Latter-day Saint missionaries; the German government had chosen to promulgate "the banishment of the 'Mormon' Elders" from the country. In order to blend in, Woodruff dressed and acted like a common worker in the country and preached in secret in homes at night, receiving support from local church members. Then, in 1896, he was released from his mission after three years of service.