Joseph Leland Heywood (1815 - 1910) was a man with a great deal of experience in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 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 Bay Colony 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