Joseph Leland Heywood

Biographical Summary 1:

Joseph Leland Heywood (1815 - 1910) was a man with a great deal of experience in the (LDS)Church and had a personal acquaintance with the Prophet Joseph Smith. He was born in Grafton, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on August 1, 1815 to Benjamin Heywood and Hannah Rawson Leland. He was of Puritan stock. His GGG Grandfather Edward Rawson was Secretary of the Massachusetts BayColony and a very prominent character in the early history of New England. His grandfather Heywood and his grandfather Leland served under General Washington. He spent his early years on his father’s farm. As a young man of twenty-two, he moved to Illinois, where, in the fall of 1839, he established a mercantile business in Quincy with his brother-in-law, Oliver Kimball. Three years later, he visited Joseph Smith and was converted to the Church. He was baptized by Orson Hyde and confirmed by Joseph Smith at Nauvoo in December, 1842. When the Latter-Day Saints commenced their exodus from Nauvoo in 1846, Heywood, along with Almon Babbitt and John S.Fullmer, was chosen as one of the trustees to supervise the disposal of Church property. After arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, he was named postmaster of Salt Lake City, Bishop of the Seventeenth Ward, and surveyor of highways in the provisional State of Deseret. He helped John M. Bernhisel at the nation’s capitol obtain a territorial government for Utah and was appointed U.S. Marshal for the newly created Utah Territory. As a colonizer, Heywood supervised the settling of Salt Creek, later Nephi, in Juab County, Utah, in 1851,and in the spring of 1855 accompanied Orson Hyde in the founding of the Mormon settlement at Carson Valley. In 1861 he moved to southern Utah,where he spent the remainder of his life and for many years was a Church patriarch. He died in Panguitch on October 16, 1910.

SOURCE: Unknown

Biographical Summary 2:

I left my native state [of Massachusetts] in the spring of 1831 and became a citizen of Illinois; I spent some time in Alton and Springfield, Ill., and moved to Quincy, Adams county, Ill., in the fall of 1839. Engaging in the mercantile business in partnership with my brother-in-law, Oliver Kimball, I remained there until the fall of 1845, when I moved with my family to the city of Nauvoo, Hancock county, Ill. In December, 1842, I visited the Prophet Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, and after listening to his preaching by the gift and power of the Holy Ghost, I was converted and asked for baptism the same hour. I was baptized by Elder Orson Hyde, in the Mississippi river, the Prophet Joseph assisting in cutting the ice. I was then confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under the hands of Elders Orson Hyde, Joseph Smith and Jedediah M. Grant.

SOURCE: "Joseph Leland Heywood," in Andrew Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Western Epics, 1971), 1:646.

• Residence: Grafton, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States - 1815
• Residence: 17th Ward Great Salt Lake City, Great Salt Lake, Utah, United States - 1860
• Residence: Utah, United States - 1870
• Residence: ED 95 Cannonville, Hillsdale, Orton, Panguitch, Tropic Precincts Panguitch city, Garfield, Utah, United States - 1900
• Residence: Panguitch, , Utah - 1910