Sarah Priscilla Leavitt Hamblin — The Midwifery Mission and Promise

In 1876, Sarah Priscilla Leavitt Hamblin — wife of the noted missionary and pioneer Jacob Hamblin — was called to a special mission as a midwife and nurse to serve the Latter-day Saint settlements in the Arizona Territory, part of the Church's first formal program to set apart women as missionary midwives. She was set apart for this sacred labor by Apostle Wilford Woodruff, who was then organizing the Saints in northern Arizona. During the administration, Woodruff pronounced a specific promise upon her: that if she remained faithful to this calling, she would be guided by the Spirit in her ministrations and would not lose a mother under her care.

Sarah embraced this mission for the remainder of her life, often traveling long distances through snow, mud, and dangerous frontier conditions to reach women in labor. She is credited with delivering well over 1,000 babies in the remote settlements of Arizona and Southern Utah. Historical records and family accounts maintain that the promise was fulfilled: she successfully attended these births without the loss of a single mother — a feat considered a remarkable providence given the lack of medical facilities and the harsh conditions of the era.

Research note: No verbatim first-person excerpt of Wilford Woodruff's blessing is available in a public archival source, so none is reproduced here. The account is documented through Sarah Priscilla's own history preserved in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers collection (submitted by her granddaughter Cora Winsor Savin, drawing on Priscilla's journal), the Church History Biographical Database (which records her 1876 setting apart by Wilford Woodruff), and the Virgin Valley Heritage Park's biographical history.