During the 1830s, Fairport Harbor served as an important gateway for many Mormon migrants traveling to and from Kirtland, twelve miles southwest, after converts followed counsel to go to Ohio. Guided by Fairport’s lights on Lake Erie, incoming saints found hope there, while missionaries departed from its banks in search of more converts. Significant Latter-Day Saint missions began from Fairport, including the first mission of the quorum of the twelve in 1835 and the church’s first mission to England in 1837. It was also the place where Joseph Smith greeted his ninety-three-year-old grandmother after she had traveled hundreds of miles to see her family, and where families welcomed loved ones and bid them farewell, often expecting many months before meeting again. Fairport also influenced daily life through commerce, as Newel K. Whitney shipped casks of ashes from his Kirtland ashery to the east. In 1847, the harbor reached a peak of commercial prosperity with nearly three thousand vessels entering and leaving, but by then the saints had left the region and had begun settling in the Salt Lake Valley.