Elijah Cheeny's Divinely Directed Mission to the Woodruff Brothers
Published October 12, 2026 at 6:20 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
While threshing grain in a barn with a flail, Elijah Cheeny was visited by the Spirit of the Lord, which told him to go north for work. He and his companion, Zera Pulsipher, walked through deep snow for sixty miles without knowing their destination, eventually finding and baptizing the Woodruff brothers.
On December 29, 1833, while returning from lumber work near Lake Ontario, Wilford Woodruff learned from his sister-in-law that two Mormon elders were staying at his home. Pulsipher and Cheeny had arrived at the Woodruff residence after traveling approximately 80 miles on foot through deep snow, guided by the Spirit to stop at that specific house. Upon hearing the news, Woodruff did not stop to eat but went immediately to the schoolhouse to hear them preach. After the meeting, Woodruff invited the elders to his home, where he read the Book of Mormon throughout the night. He was baptized by Zerah Pulsipher on December 31, 1833.
In Their Own Words
“I came home in the evening, and my sister-in-law told me of this meeting. I had been drawing logs from the shores of Lake Ontario... and I turned out my horses, did not stop to eat anything, and went to the meeting... I listened for the first time in my life to a Gospel sermon as taught by the Elders of this Church. It was what I had sought for from my boyhood up. — Wilford Woodruff, Deseret Evening News, March 1, 1897”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 25 February 1897 (Vol. 59, No. 8). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1897-02-25_59_8 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Additional sources (periodical research): Wilford Woodruff Papers, Day in Church History, December 29, 1833. https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/day-in-church-history/1833-12-29; Kurt Manwaring, 'Who Was Zerah Pulsipher?', From the Desk, May 7, 2026. https://fromthedesk.org/zerah-pulsipher/
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