On the 6th day of May, 1847, Anson, in company with his brother-in-law Joseph Holbrook, moved to the Pottawatomie lands on the east side of the Missouri river and engaged in farming, in which pursuit he had in the past been successful. After plowing and seeding the ground the fields were left to the care of their wives and children and they sought work to provide their families with such necessaries as only money could buy, and they engaged in cutting and hauling hay into St. Joseph, and returned to their families in time to harvest the crop they had planted. After making his family as comfortable as possible for the winter, Anson returned to St. Joseph, this time accompanied by his brothers Josiah and Harvey and his brother-in-law Chester Loveland. They obtained profitable employment and remained there until the following March when Anson returned to his family and began making preparations for the journey to the mountains. He removed his family from their temporary home on Mosquito Creek into Winter Quarters and on the 14th of June left Winter Quarters for the westward journey. They crossed the Elk Horn on the 17th and then halted for ten days for the companies to assemble and organize. Seven hundred wagons were organized into two divisions. In one of these Anson was placed in charge of twenty wagons. The company was thoroughly equipped for self-defense and had a remarkably successful journey, arriving in Salt Lake City, September 19th, 1848. Three days later he removed his family ten miles northward, and located in what was first known as North Canyon Ward, afterwards Bountiful. When he arrived there he had one pig, six chickens, one pet sheep, four oxen, four cows and two calves--not a very great start towards stock-raising, which he expected to be one of his pursuits. If he had been superstitious, he would probably have decided that the signs were against his engaging in the stock-raising business, as the 6th day after he located his farm his pig died, the 7th an Indian killed his sheep and on the 8th his best ox drowned in a spring hole. He was not disposed to give up or get discouraged, but proved himself a man of resource, and when his oxen were found to be insufficient for the work required of them he used cows to help draw the plow. He only had five bushels of seed grain, but he succeeded in raising two hundred bushels from that the first year, besides quite a lot of corn; and this notwithstanding the ravages of the crickets. He showed good judgment in the selection of a farm; it proved to be as good land as could be found in Utah, if not in the world. In September, 1849, he was appointed to preside as Bishop over the North Canyon ward, and that year raised one thousand bushels of grain.