Wilford Woodruff’s Childhood Dream Fulfilled — Baptizing His Uncle Ozem at West Avon (1837)

When Wilford Woodruff was a boy of about ten, he had a dream that was fulfilled nearly twenty years later, when he baptized his uncle Ozem Woodruff, his wife Hannah, and their son John after preaching in a schoolhouse in West Avon, Connecticut, in 1837.

The fuller account is recorded in Matthias F. Cowley’s biography, Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life and Labors (1909). In 1837, Elder Woodruff — then laboring in the East before his mission to the Fox Islands — returned to his boyhood home in Avon, Hartford County, Connecticut. “There I visited many of my former neighbors, and my relatives, also the grave of my mother, Beulah Woodruff, who died June 11th, 1808, when she was twenty-six years of age.” He then walked six miles to Farmington, where he had the happy privilege of meeting his father, Aphek Woodruff, and his stepmother, whom he had not seen for seven years. “They greeted me with great kindness. It was a happy meeting.”

“After visiting with my father for a day or two, I returned to Avon, where most of my relatives lived, and held meetings with them. On the 12th of June, 1837, I baptized my uncle, Ozem Woodruff, his wife, Hannah, and their son, John, and we rejoiced together; for this was in fulfillment of a dream I had in 1818, when I was eleven years of age.”

Uncle Ozem and Aunt Hannah were no strangers to young Wilford’s spiritual life. In his own account of his early days he wrote that during the religious reformation in Farmington, “a number of my relatives were actively engaged in the service of the Lord according to the best light they had. Among them were my Uncle Ozem Woodruff and his wife Hannah. They were good people and I was much attached to them, having lived with them a good deal in my early life.”

In his journal, Wilford recorded the event briefly: “I preached in a schoolhouse in West Avon to an attentive congregation; after meeting I baptized my uncle, Ozem Woodruff, his wife and son, John, in fulfillment of a dream which I had at ten years of age.” The journal places the dream at age ten (about 1817), while the biography places it in 1818 at age eleven; the Wilford Woodruff Papers dates the baptism to July 12, 1837. The contents of the childhood dream itself were never recorded beyond its fulfillment.

The reunion bore further fruit: Wilford’s father Aphek, whom he had just greeted after seven years, was baptized by Wilford on the first day of July, 1838. Uncle Ozem lived to the advanced age of ninety-two, dying in December 1878.

In a journal entry dated September 6, 1892, reflecting on his visit to Avon, Woodruff adds further detail, noting that he baptized Ozem, Hannah, and 'two of their children.' This later account also clarifies that his cousin Melinda Woodruff Hatch occupied the family homestead and had assisted Junius F. Wells in acquiring likenesses for Woodruff. In this same entry, Woodruff retrospectively places the childhood dream at 'eight years of age,' providing a third age variant (after the previously recorded ten and eleven).