Willard Washington Bean: The 'Fighting Parson' Who Restored the Hill Cumorah (1868–1949)

Willard Washington Bean (16 May 1868 – 1949), born in Provo, Utah, to George Washington Bean and Elizabeth Baum, was a boxer and athlete nicknamed the 'Fighting Parson' and the 'Mormon Cyclone' before he was called, in 1915, on a special mission to care for the Joseph Smith Farm in Palmyra, New York. For more than twenty-four years he and his wife Rebecca served as missionaries and caretakers of the Smith farm and other Church property there, standing for the Restoration in the very place where it began. Brother Bean was instrumental in the acquisition of the Hill Cumorah and other properties of sacred significance, restoring them for the Saints. His life is a faith-promoting witness of a man the Lord 'raised up' to reclaim and hallow the sacred places of the Restoration.