Earle Stone, a Latter-day Saint from the greater Hartford, Connecticut, area, has spent decades researching the sites associated with the early years of Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He has identified a number of homes once occupied by ancestors of President Woodruff as well as sites where Wilford lived and was employed as a young man. In 2007, a symposium on the life of Wilford Woodruff was held at the Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Wilford’s birth in 1807. Professors from BYU and several others presented information about the life of President Woodruff in various sessions. The keynote speaker was Thomas G. Alexander, a biographer of President Woodruff.
Following the symposium, Stone led interested persons on a tour of various sites associated with President Woodruff including extant homes and headstones in cemeteries. One of these was the grave of Robert Mason, a respected associate of the Woodruff family who, sometime around 1800, had a vision of God’s future kingdom on the earth. He prophesied that he would never live to find it but that Wilford would and “stand in that kingdom and assist in building it up” (see Thomas G. Alexander's "Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet" ).