Description

I Won’t Have Your Place

The year was 1835 near Albion, Illinois. Two men, Jefferson Hunt and John Woodland, attended a meeting in which they first heard the restored gospel of Jesus Christ preached. The following was recorded in Woodland family records:

[They were] “told of the heavenly visitations of a messenger and that Joseph Smith had obtained some marvelous records. It was a very strange story. After leaving the meeting and bidding good night to Jefferson Hunt, John was impressed to pray. The evil one tried to overcome him, but he cast it off. John became thoroughly satisfied that the gospel was true. Through this testimony, he said all his family and Jefferson Hunt were baptized.”

After joining the church, Jefferson Hunt wanted to sell out and join the Saints in Missouri. John purchased his friend’s farm. That night, after the purchase, an angel of the Lord appeared to John in a dream and showed him a beautiful piece of land, his new home, and told him to go and search it out. He was told that he would know the place by a grove of trees in which a single tree would stand much higher than the others. He was to go to that tree, “place his back against it” and pace off to the west. “There he would find a spring with white sand boiling up in it, and he would know that this was his new home.”

The next morning, John told Jefferson Hunt about the dream and asked if he would wait a few days and he would go with him to Missouri. Not long after, the two men saddled up and rode into Missouri. Jefferson Hunt soon found a place that suited him and laid his claim. John felt impressed to turn to the north. They rode about two miles and saw a grove of trees with one standing higher than the rest. “There is the tree I saw in my dream,” exclaimed John. They rode into the grove. John placed his back against the tree and walked 25 paces west and there found the white sand spring he had seen in vision. It was a beautiful place. John built a cabin to lay his claim and the two men went back to Illinois to get their families.

In 1838, the Prophet Joseph Smith came to visit John and Celia Woodland at their home in Daviess County Missouri. The records say:

“After looking over the place, he said: ‘Oh, Brother John, what a pretty place you have! What would you take for it for a Stake in Zion?’ Brother Woodland answered: ‘If it is the will of the Lord, take it and give me another place as good.’ Brother Joseph stood a minute, bowed his head, and after standing in this attitude for some minutes, raised his head and said: ‘Brother John, I won’t have your place, for the Lord showed it to you and you had faith enough to seek it out.’ He then placed his hands on Brother Woodland’s head and sealed the place unto him and his posterity for life and all eternity. He told him to never sell the place. John was afterward offered a great amount of money for it, but would not sell it and forbade his posterity to ever sell it. This place is on Spring Hill, very near to Adam-ondi-Ahman.”

John and Celia Woodland lived on that property until mob violence and the Extermination Order of the Governor drove them out. Their house was burned, their property destroyed, and family members murdered, but the Woodlands kept the faith and followed the church to Nauvoo and later to Utah. They were both laid to rest in the old cemetery in Willard, Utah.

Source:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWJB-JL7