On June 21st, 1848, Elder Woodruff with his family, and several others, eleven in all, started upon his Eastern mission. They first went to Mt. Pisgah where they found a number of the Saints to whom they preached. There would naturally be some misgiving as to the faith and continuity of those who remained some distance in the rear of the Saints, those who were unwilling to follow the lead of President Young and the Twelve would naturally discourage the more timid ones.
It was during this journey, and on the 5th of July, that Elder Woodruff records a miraculous escape by one of those spiritual impressions that frequently came across his life. He had tied his mules to an oak-wood tree beside which he was camping. His children were sleeping in the wagon, and he felt impressed to move from his camping-ground, so he moved his children into a house. Only a short time elapsed when a thunder-storm swept over the place in great fury. Of the circumstance he writes: "We had just retired when the storm reached us in great fury, and in a moment the large oak came thundering down to the ground with a terrific crash. Had I not moved my mules, it would probably have killed them. Had I not moved my carriage, it would have been crushed to atoms, and we would have been killed, as the tree fell where my carriage stood. It just missed Brother Kingsley's wagon. I consider my impression an interposition of Providence to save our lives."
On the 9th, they arrived at Nauvoo and went through the Temple from basement to steeple, and again gazed on the once beautiful, but now desolate city of Nauvoo. While at the city, in the home of Almon Babbit, Elder Woodruff met a man who had come from Michigan to hear the gospel, and to whom he preached for one hour and then led him down into the waters of the Mississippi. During the same day, in a house built by George A. Smith, and occupied by Elder John Snyder, he confirmed the man whom he had just baptized and ordained him an elder and sent him on his way rejoicing.
Before leaving Nauvoo on his eastward journey, he sold his mules, carriage and harness and took steamer down the river to St. Louis. From this point Elder Woodruff boarded a steamer for La Salle, Illinois, and thence to Louisville, where he visited his brother-in-law and sister, Luther and Rhoda Scammon. Here death, for the fourth time, entered his family circle and called to the spirit world an infant of nine months.
Here Elder Woodruff's industrious nature asserted itself, and he went into the wheat field pitching bundles of grain. After leaving his kinsmen he continued his journey by wagon, rivers, lakes, and railways via Chicago and arrived in Boston on August 12th, 1848. The journey, by the route which he had taken from Council Bluffs, covered a distance of 2,595 miles. He remained some time preaching the gospel at Boston and then continued his journey to Portland, Maine. From there he went to Scarboro where he met other relations. It was a happy reunion after a separation of eight years.
The return of Apostle Woodruff to the East would naturally awaken within him the keenest satisfaction over the opportunity it afforded to meet, after years of strenuous life and marvelous adventure, old friends and kinsmen. To them, his affections first turned, and he told all the wonderful things which God had wrought in the gathering of the Saints to the Valleys of the Mountains. From Maine he returned to Boston, went on to New York, and a little later took up his labors in Philadelphia. It was here he called on Colonel Kane, a tried and true friend to the Mormon people in the hour of their sorrow. By Colonel Kane he was most cordially welcomed.
To his wife who remained with her people in Maine, he wrote on October 18th, 1848, this very significant letter: "I have been much blessed by the spirit of God since I saw you. I have felt more of the presence and power of God in me than I expected to enjoy on this Eastern mission. I have felt that someone has prayed for me much of late. I wonder if it was Phoebe! I know how often you pray for me, and I feel its power and prize it much. I have never felt such a desire to prove worthy of your confidence and trust, and shun every appearance of evil, keep out of the path of all temptation, and do right in all things. I have had much of the spirit of secret prayer, have poured out my soul in supplication to God with tears of joy, and at the same time the visions of my mind have been opened so that I saw clearly my duty to my God, to my wife, to my children, to the Saints, and to the world at large. I have also seen the awful and certain judgments of God, which like a gathering storm are ready to burst upon the whole Gentile world, especially this nation which has heard the sound of the gospel but rejected it, together with the testimony of the servants of God; has stoned and killed the prophets; has become drunk with the blood of martyrs and Saints; and finally has driven the entire Church with the priesthood and keys of eternal life out of its midst into the wilderness and mountains of Israel."
At New Haven, on the 21st, a remarkable case of healing occurred, of which Elder Woodruff writes as follows: "A sister Turtle was very low with yellow fever. Some of Job's comforters had called upon her and reproached her for being a Latter-day Saint, and had asked her why she did not get her elders to heal her. While under this strain and reproach she cried out, 'O, that the Lord would send Brother Woodruff here!' It was only a few moments before she received a note from me saying that I was coming to see her. When I came, we laid hands upon her and she was healed, and I returned home praising God. The following day, Sunday, Mr. Smith Turtle and his wife, who had been healed the day before, were present in our meeting.
"On the 23rd of October, 1848, I ordained Jairus Sanford a high priest. He was nearly 86 years of age. He had been liberal with his means and faithful in his duties. I left the aged patriarch rejoicing in God and went on my way to North Haven."
On the 25th of October, Elder Woodruff arrived in Boston by rail and found himself in the midst of a grand demonstration. The people were celebrating the inauguration of a new water system by which the water of the Long Pond was conveyed into the city of Boston. The procession covered a distance of seven miles, requiring two and a half hours to pass any given point. Of that occasion Elder Woodruff writes: "At the close of the speeches the mayor arose and said: 'Fellow citizens, it is proposed that the water of Lake Cochitreate be admitted into the city of Boston. All those who favor it say, 'aye.' The response was in a voice of thunder. At a given signal a column of water 8 feet in diameter shot up 80 feet in the air and fell into a great reservoir." In the evening there were fire-works and other illuminations. This was considered at this time the grandest celebration ever witnessed in any American city.