Layton, aided by his many sons, was active in business, as well as in the faith, operating stores, a flour mill, an ice factory and a number of stage lines, one of which stretched all the way from Bowie Station through the Gila Valley, to Globe, and, through the Tonto Basin, to Pine and Fort Verde, the longest stage mail line in the Southwest at the time. The transfer of headquarters of St. Joseph Stake appears to have been determined upon very soon after the arrival of Layton at St. David. One of his counselors, David P. Kimball, visited Smithville March 10, 1883, and in May Layton himself was on the ground, visiting Smithville (Pima) and Safford. There was approval of the new settlement of Curtis on May 10 and on the 13th was location of the townsite of Thatcher. At this time there appears to have been determination to move headquarters of the Stake from St. David to Smithville, where the first formal quarterly conference of the Stake was held June 3. No record can be found of this transfer nor of the subsequent change to Thatcher. A New Leader on the Gila In 1897 President Layton's health declined and on January 27, 1898, he was released from his spiritual office, to which was appointed Andrew Kimball, this with a letter from President Wilford Woodruff, expressing the highest appreciation of Layton's labors. Christopher Layton left Arizona June 13, 1898, for his old home in Kaysville, Utah, where he died August 7. At a reunion, about six years ago, of the Layton descendants and their families, were present 594 individuals. Andrew Kimball, successor to the presidency of St. Joseph Stake, had formal installation January 30, 1898, at the hands of Apostles John Henry Smith and John W. Taylor, at the same time there being general reorganization of the Church subdivision. President Kimball, who still most actively is in office, is a son of the noted Apostle Heber C. Kimball, First Counselor to President Brigham Young. President Kimball from the very first showed keen enthusiasm in the work of upbuilding his community. In October of the year of his installation he returned to Utah, like the spies returned from the land of Canaan, bringing equally large stories of the fertility of the new land. Instead of bearing a huge bunch of grapes, he had to take with him photographs, in order to secure reception of his stories of corn that was sixteen feet tall, Johnson grass eight feet high, a sweet potato that weighed 36 pounds, of peaches too big to go into the mouth of a preserving jar, sunflower stalks that were used for fence poles, weeds that had to be cut with an ax and sugar cane that grew four years from one planting. On the strength of his enthusiasm, very material additions were made to the population of the Gila Valley, and the President even yet keeps busy in missionary work, not only of his Church, but work calculated to assist in the upbuilding of the Southwest along irrigated agricultural lines. Church Academies of Learning