Vinson Knight, a farm owner from Perrysburg, New York, joined then-called The Church of the Latter-day Saints in 1834. Joseph Smith had received Doctrine and Covenants Section 100 in Perrysburg the year before. Knight subsequently moved to Kirtland, Ohio; Daviess County, Missouri; and Commerce (later Nauvoo), Illinois (see josephsmithpapers.org, Vinson Knight biography).
As land agent in Nauvoo, he acquired a 13,000-acre parcel of land from Isaac Galland. Historian Glen Leonard explains that Knight acquired the property in 1839 in anticipation of immigrants settling on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River (see Leonard's "Nauvoo, a Place of Peace, a People of Promise").
Vinson Knight was charged in the Doctrine and Covenants 124:74-76 to “plead the cause of the poor and the needy.” He served as bishop of the Lower Ward in Nauvoo. On April 6, 1841, Bishop Knight, “as President of the Lesser Priesthood,” laid the northwest cornerstone of the Nauvoo Temple (see Norton Jacob cited in "The Mormon Vanguard Brigade of 1847," edited by Ronald O. Barney)
Vinson Knight passed away in 1842 at age 38. At his funeral, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “There lies a man that has done more for me than my own brother would do” (see "Who’s Who in the Doctrine and Covenants" by Susan Easton Black).
His first Nauvoo home is no longer extant, but his later home still stands near the southwest corner of the intersection of Main and Kimball streets. It is privately owned and not open for tours.