DEDICATION OF THE SALT LAKE TEMPLE, 1892.
New Home.—Visit of President Eliot to Salt Lake City.—Completing the Temple.—Amnesty.—Dedication of the Salt Lake Temple.—Visit to the World's Fair, Chicago.—Liberal Party Disbands.
By the opening of the year 1892 President Woodruff had well in hand, not only the routine duties of his office, but the general administrative needs of the Church. He was in good state of health and grateful for the peaceful conditions which then prevailed. The prosecution for plural marriage had literally ceased, though the Liberals still had control of the city.
He had for some time been interested in the completion of his new home in Waterloo, a home which was to be called the Woodruff Villa. It was a comfortable brick house, though not at all pretentious. While his home surroundings in the past had afforded him the needed comforts of life, they were simple and in harmony with his neighbors' homes, and with his own unpretentious character.
On the 1st of March he reached his eighty-fifth year, and his wife Emma her fifty-fourth. That day was selected for the dedication of the new home, an event to which he looked forward with a large measure of satisfaction.
On March 6th he made a record of the visit of President Eliot to Salt Lake City. President Eliot was accompanied by his wife. During the day President Woodruff dined with them and listened to an address delivered in the Tabernacle by Harvard's eminent President. Of the occasion President Woodruff wrote: "He spoke about forty-five minutes in a beautiful and pleasing manner, and advocated the rights of all people to the free enjoyment of every religious and political guarantee. I made a few remarks and then thanked President Eliot for his liberal views."
It will be remembered that in the course of President Eliot's remarks he compared the pioneer journey of the Mormon people to Salt Lake Valley and the hardships of those early experiences with the Pilgrim Fathers and their early settlement on the New England coast. This was more than the good people of Puritan descent could endure; to compare the Mormon people with the Pilgrim Fathers was a specie of profanity that touched the righteous conscience of many New Englanders in and about Boston. Many of the newspapers of that city cried out in loud lamentation against such sacrilege. A few conservative papers, however, were not so sure about the great disparity between the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mormons, even in the matter of morals. President Eliot, however, made no reply. He was accustomed frequently to arouse the ire of his New England brethren; and conscious that he was on the right side of a question, he was as loath to yield as he was free to tell them the naked truth.
About this time, on the 21st of March, President Woodruff expressed a special interest he felt in the court proceedings that had been inaugurated in Missouri by the Reorganites for the purpose of ousting the Hedrickites from their ownership and control of the Temple Block at Independence, Jackson County. On that day he gave evidence in court relative to Church authority, and the interests of our people in the controversy. In the decision of the Supreme court of the State of Missouri the Hedrickites received a decision favorable to their claims and thus the Temple Block was left in statu quo.
April conference of that year was unusually well attended. It was, perhaps, the largest that had hitherto assembled in the Church. It was at that conference that Jonathan G. Kimball, son of President Heber C. Kimball, was chosen to fill the vacancy created in the First Council of Seventies, made vacant by the death of Henry Herriman. During this conference, on April 6, the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was laid by President Woodruff, in the presence of a large assembly gathered to witness the ceremony.
On the 11th of the month President Woodruff, with a portion of his family, paid a visit to the Salt Lake Temple. They ascended to the top of the Temple tower, where they deposited some coins in the upper stone, and then inspected every room in the building.