One day while traveling towards Warsaw they were overtaken by Joseph and Hyrum Smith, who after more than six months imprisonment in Missouri had made their escape and were on their way to Illinois. They were in such a hurry in consequence of their enemies pursuing them that they took only time for a few hasty words, but inquired where Anson expected to locate, and promised to pay him a visit after they reached their destination. This promise they faithfully kept, in company with Sidney Rigdon and Vincent Knight. They took dinner with the Call family and spent much of the afternoon in relating the circumstances of their escape from Missouri. The prophet also told them that he had purchased a tract of land in Illinois—the same upon which Nauvoo was afterwards built—as a gathering place for the Saints.
In October, 1839, Anson with his wife and youngest child made a trip into Ohio to visit her mother, leaving his two older children in the care of Miss Hannah Flint, Mrs. Call's sister, who had for some time shared the home of the Call family. They returned to Illinois in the Spring of 1840, in company with Chester Loveland and Jeremiah Willey, and soon afterwards Anson and Chester Loveland rented a farm in Carthage, where they were fairly successful, and interspersed their labors on the farm with preaching in the Carthage court house.
In the Spring of 1841 Anson and his family removed to Raymas, afterwards called Macedonia, where he and others purchased an extensive tract of land, upon which a stake of Zion was later organized, of which Anson was one of the High Councilors.
On the 13th of May, 1841, Anson's birthday, his wife give birth to twin boys and afterwards had a long spell of sickness. She was restored to health on being administered to.
In the spring of 1842 Anson moved his family into Nauvoo, having been counseled so to do by the leaders of the Church.
The following September he went upon a mission to the state of Ohio, his companion being B. F. Cummings. While on the way to Ohio they traveled and preached through the states of Illinois and Indiana, and baptized forty persons. They returned to their homes in Nauvoo the last day of March, 1842. The winter had been unusually severe, and even at that time the Ohio, Illinois and Missouri rivers were still frozen over, so that teams could cross on the ice. Anson found his family well, but rather destitute. He spent that season raising a light crop of corn, building a small brick house and quarrying stone for the Temple.
On the 14th of July, 1843, Anson and quite a number of the brethren crossed the Mississippi river to the town of Montrose to be present at the installment of the masonic lodge of the "Rising Sun." They assembled in a block school house in front of which there was ample shade, and had a barrel of ice water to quench their thirst. Judge George J. Adams was the highest masonic authority in the state, and had been sent there to organize the lodge. He, Hyrum Smith and John C. Bennett, being high masons, went into the house to perform certain ceremonies which the others were not entitled to witness. The others, Joseph Smith among them, remained under the bowery. The prophet, as he was testing the cold water warned the brethren not to drink of it too freely, and with the tumbler still in his hand prophesied that the Saints would yet go to the Rocky Mountains and remarked that the water he had just drank of tasted much like the crystal streams that flowed down from the snowcapped mountains, where their future home would be located. Anson, in subsequently describing this incident, said "I had before seen him in vision, and now saw, while he was talking, his countenance changed to white; not the deadly white of a bloodless face, but a living, brilliant white. He seemed absorbed in gazing at something at a great distance and said "I am gazing at the valleys of the mountains." Then the prophet gave a vivid description of the scenery of the mountains and valleys just as many of those who listened to him afterwards learned to know them in reality. Pointing to Shadrach Roundy and others he said "There are some men here who shall do a great work in that land." Pointing to Brother Call, he said "There is Anson; he shall go and shall assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other, and you, (seeming to include in the scope of his remarks many others) shall perform as great a work as has been done by man, so that the nations of the earth shall be astonished, and many of them will be gathered in that land and assist in building cities and temples, and Israel shall be made to rejoice."
Anson, in speaking in the later years of his life of this occasion, said:
"It is impossible to represent in words this scene, which is still vivid in my mind; of the grandeur of Joseph's appearance, his beautiful descriptions of this land and his wonderful prophetic utterances as they emanated from the glorious inspirations that overshadowed him. There was a force and power in his exclamations, of which the following is but a faint echo. "Oh! the beauty of those snow-capped mountains! The cool refreshing streams that are running down through those mountain gorges!" Then gazing in another direction as if there was a change of locality, "Oh! the scenes that this people will pass through! The dead that will lie between here and there!" Then turning in another direction as if the scene had again changed: "Oh! the apostasy that will take place before my brethren reach that land!" But he continued, "The priesthood shall prevail over all its enemies, triumph over the devil and be established upon the earth never more to be thrown down." He then charged us with great force and power to be faithful in those things that had been and should be committed to our charge, with the promise of all the blessings that the priesthood could bestow. "Remember these things and treasure them up, Amen."
During the summer of 1843 the building of the Nauvoo Temple progressed rapidly and the Saints increased. The non-"Mormon" residents of Nauvoo and the surrounding region grew restless and uneasy, and it was evident to the close observer that they were growing jealous and suspicious of the increasing numbers and influence of the "Mormons." The intolerance with which the Missourians had regarded the "Mormons" had seemed to subside for awhile after they located in Nauvoo, but it had only been smoldering and was ready to burst out into a flame again upon the slightest provocation.