{"id":52499,"date":"2026-05-19T05:23:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=52499"},"modified":"2026-05-17T15:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:49:32","slug":"history-from-the-middle-the-enchanted-world-of-the-man-who-baptized-wilford-woodruff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/05\/history-from-the-middle-the-enchanted-world-of-the-man-who-baptized-wilford-woodruff\/","title":{"rendered":"History from the Middle: The Enchanted World of the Man Who Baptized Wilford Woodruff"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the winter of 1833, a fierce snowstorm swept through upstate New York. Most farmers hunkered down, but Zerah Pulsipher<\/a> felt a nagging, inexplicable impression to head north. He didn\u2019t know why, and he certainly didn\u2019t know who he was looking for. He simply felt that there was a grain of “wheat” buried under the snow that needed gathering. He traveled until he reached the farm of two brothers, Wilford and Azmon Woodruff. A few days later, Zerah cut a hole in the ice of a frozen creek and baptized Wilford. As they waded out of the water, Wilford later recorded a detail that defies physics but perfectly captures the era: “I did not feel the cold.”<\/p>\n

Most Latter-day Saints know Wilford Woodruff<\/a>. He is the meticulous diarist, the majestic Apostle, the man who issued the Manifesto. But almost no one knows Zerah Pulsipher, the man who walked into the snow to find him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have spent the last decade or so living with Zerah\u2019s ghost, researching and writing his biography, A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher<\/i><\/a> (Greg Kofford Books). As I prepared this book, I had to ask myself: Why write a biography of a “middle manager”? Zerah was not a Prophet, Seer, or Revelator. He was a President of the Seventy, a role that placed him squarely in the middle of the hierarchy. He was the man who took orders from Joseph and Brigham and had to make them work on the ground.\u00a0But that is exactly why his story matters. We often view Church history through the “Great Man” theory\u2014moving from the headspace of Joseph Smith to the administrative genius of Brigham Young. But for the thousands of Saints who lived through the Restoration, history didn\u2019t happen in the First Presidency\u2019s office. It happened in the mud, in the sick tents, and in the ecstatic prayer circles of the rank and file. Zerah Pulsipher offers us a “History from the Middle,” and it turns out, the view from the middle is where the real texture of the Restoration is found.<\/p>\n

And I will note that I’ve been excited to see the early reactions to this biography<\/strong>. Out of the handful of people I’ve shared it with in advance, they’ve talked with me a lot about enjoying<\/em> reading the book<\/strong>. I love this because I was not only trying to write in an academic style, but in a way that people would enjoy reading, even if they aren’t academics. W. Paul Reeve, for example, wrote that, “In Nielsen\u2019s skillful retelling, readers will delight in the front row seat they are offered into a cosmic contest that played out somewhere between heaven and earth.” Kristy Wheelwright Taylor likewise called it “a compelling narrative” about “the complex life of an early Latter-day Saint.” And Todd Compton wrote, “Nielsen follows the ups and downs of the career of this devout, sometimes irascible man with scholarly care and a sure storyteller\u2019s skill.” And an advanced reader on Goodreads said, “I found this book to be a fascinating read\u2014far more engaging than a typical, dry biography of early Mormon history.” It’s encouraging to see the storytelling aspect of the biography be seen as well done.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the biography does satisfy an academic audience,<\/strong> too. Kristy Wheelwright Taylor called it a “well-researched and thorough examination of Pulsipher and the era in which he lived,” while Kurt Manwaring said that it is “one of the most important Mormon biographies of the decade.” Todd Compton felt that it was ” a fascinating and exhaustively researched biography” that “illuminates many issues\u2014for example, the priesthood calling of the Seventy, the immanence of the supernatural for early Mormons, and the challenges of polygamy.” So far, readers have spoken highly of the scholarly side of A Barn Full of Angels<\/em>, which is also exciting.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a><\/p>\n

The Enchanted Worldview<\/b><\/p>\n

The title of the book comes from Zerah\u2019s own conversion. Before he ever heard of Joseph Smith, Zerah was a seeker. In 1832, while threshing grain in his barn, he experienced a vision. He saw lights descend from the rafters and angels standing upon the threshing floor. One of them held a book, which Zerah later recognized as the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a metaphor to him. Zerah lived in what scholars call an “enchanted world”\u2014a worldview in which the veil between the natural and the supernatural was porous. Throughout his life, Zerah fought devils in physical wrestling matches and healed the sick by rebuking the “Destroyer” as if it were a person standing in the room.<\/p>\n

For modern readers, this can be jarring. We have largely sanitized our pioneer history, turning it into a narrative of grit, wagons, and irrigation. But Zerah\u2019s life forces us to confront the reality that early Mormonism was wild, charismatic, and deeply magical. To understand Zerah is to understand a version of the faith where miracles were common, but so were spiritual battles that felt terrifyingly literal.<\/p>\n

The Manager at Work<\/b><\/p>\n

Perhaps Zerah\u2019s greatest contribution\u2014and the moment where the “middle manager” became the hero\u2014was the Kirtland Camp of 1838.<\/p>\n

When the Church collapsed in Kirtland due to the banking crisis and apostasy, Joseph Smith and the Apostles had to flee for their lives. Who was left behind? The poor. The widows, the elderly, and those who had lost everything in the crash. They were stranded in a hostile town with no resources.<\/p>\n

It was Zerah Pulsipher, along with other Presidents of the Seventy, who organized them. They vowed that the poor would work together and not leave any behind. Zerah then helped lead this “Kirtland Camp”\u2014over 500 impoverished souls\u2014on a nearly 900-mile trek to Missouri.<\/p>\n

This is a part of our history we rarely discuss. It was a logistical nightmare. Zerah had to manage the “murmuring” of the hungry Saints while navigating the “Destroyer” when sickness ravaged the camp. He wasn’t receiving revelations on the destiny of the cosmos; he was trying to figure out how to feed 500 people when the wagons kept breaking. It is a profound case study in leadership “from the middle,” showing how the Seventy stepped up when the structure above them fractured.<\/p>\n

The Collision with Bureaucracy<\/b><\/p>\n

If the first half of Zerah\u2019s life is about the thrill of charismatic religion, the second half is a tragedy of institutionalization.<\/p>\n

Zerah was an “old guard” Saint. He believed in the authority of the Spirit. But as the Saints settled in Utah, the Church became increasingly structured and bureaucratic. Forms, permissions, and hierarchies began to solidify.<\/p>\n

This collision came to a head in 1862. Zerah, relying on oral instructions and his authority as a Seventy, performed a plural marriage sealing for a couple without the proper clearance from his bishop. In his mind, he was doing what he had always done\u2014acting on authority to bless the Saints, and assuming that the tentative approval given through Brigham Young was sufficient. In the eyes of the increasingly structured bureaucracy, he was a rogue element.<\/p>\n

He was cited to appear before the High Council. The trial was humiliating. The man who had baptized Wilford Woodruff and led the Kirtland Camp was stripped of his presidency and told that his understanding of authority was obsolete.<\/p>\n

It is a heartbreaking moment, but an instructive one. It marks the end of an era. The loose, vibrant, charismatic authority of Kirtland had finally given way to the ordered, correlated authority of Salt Lake City. Zerah was a casualty of that necessary maturation. He remained faithful, but he died a man somewhat out of time\u2014a relic of a wilder, more enchanted past.<\/p>\n

Why Read Zerah Now?<\/b><\/p>\n

Zerah Pulsipher’s life complicates the narrative of Latter-day Saint pioneers in necessary ways. He was a man who claimed to love the Native Americans he encountered in Southern Utah, believing them to be descendants of the Book of Mormon peoples, yet his presence contributed to the ecological collapse that destroyed their way of life. He was a polygamist who preached that wives should overcome their “hellish fear” of sharing husbands, yet he was a tender father who stopped at nothing to save his children from illness. He was a visionary who saw angels in a barn, but was humbled by a local bishop.\u00a0A Barn Full of Angels<\/i> attempts to navigate the delicate space between faith and history. It is not hagiography; Zerah is flawed, sometimes harsh, and occasionally wrong. But it is also not a polemic. It is an invitation to step back into the nineteenth century and see the Restoration through the eyes of a believer who stood in the middle of the whirlwind.<\/p>\n

I hope you\u2019ll join me in rediscovering Zerah Pulsipher.<\/p>\n

\n

Chad L. Nielsen is the author of <\/i>A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher<\/a>, available now from Greg Kofford Books.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the winter of 1833, a fierce snowstorm swept through upstate New York. Most farmers hunkered down, but Zerah Pulsipher felt a nagging, inexplicable impression to head north. He didn\u2019t know why, and he certainly didn\u2019t know who he was looking for. He simply felt that there was a grain of “wheat” buried under the snow that needed gathering. He traveled until he reached the farm of two brothers, Wilford and Azmon Woodruff. A few days later, Zerah cut a hole in the ice of a frozen creek and baptized Wilford. As they waded out of the water, Wilford later recorded a detail that defies physics but perfectly captures the era: “I did not feel the cold.” Most Latter-day Saints know Wilford Woodruff. He is the meticulous diarist, the majestic Apostle, the man who issued the Manifesto. But almost no one knows Zerah Pulsipher, the man who walked into the snow to find him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":53572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/barn-full-of-angels-zera-pulsipher-chad-nielsen.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52499"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53614,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52499\/revisions\/53614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}