Brigham Young Counsels Eastern Saints to Sail to California — Horner Obeys and Becomes California's First Farmer

In late 1845, when the Saints were preparing to leave Nauvoo, Brigham Young gave counsel to the eastern Saints to charter a ship and sail around Cape Horn to California. John M. Horner, then 24 years old, was among those who obeyed. He sailed on the ship Brooklyn from New York in February 1846 — newly married the day before departure.

Horner later reflected on the divine chain of events set in motion by this counsel:

'I fully realized it was my obedience to the counsel of his servant in sending me to California and his continual blessings, that had placed me in the enviable position I then enjoyed.'

He became the first Anglo-Saxon settler of Alameda County, California, and the first person to successfully farm the territory commercially. His obedience to prophetic counsel placed him in precisely the right position at precisely the right time — when hundreds of thousands of gold-rush immigrants flooded California and desperately needed food. Within a few years of following that counsel, he had built a farming and business empire that netted him over $60,000 per year.