, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to JS, , Hancock Co., IL, 3 June 1841; handwriting of ; three pages; JS Collection, CHL. Includes dockets.
Bifolium measuring 9⅞ × 7⅞ inches (25 × 20 cm) ruled with thirty horizontal blue lines that are now faded. The letter was written on the recto and verso of the first leaf and the recto of the second leaf. The document was trifolded twice in letter style, addressed, and sealed with a red wafer. The first leaf was torn, likely when the letter was opened.
The document was docketed by , who served in a clerical capacity for JS from 1841 to 1842. A later docket was added by , who served as a clerk in the Church Historian’s Office from 1853 to 1859. The letter was listed in an inventory produced by the Church Historian’s Office circa 1904. The dockets and inventory suggest continuous institutional custody of this letter from the time it was received.
“Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, 1, Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL.
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
Historical Introduction
wrote a letter to his brother JS on 3 June 1841 before departing , Illinois, on a business trip to . As indicated in his letter, Don Carlos hoped JS could help him with several business transactions, including exchanging property in for property in , settling debts in Ohio, and selling land in Illinois. Although the brothers both lived in Nauvoo, Don Carlos explained in this letter that he had written instead of visiting because JS was busy and unavailable.
At the time this letter was written, was working as an editor of the Times and Seasons and was “strugling in poverty to sustain the press.” He also had outstanding financial obligations in and hoped he could settle these debts with the aid of JS’s , who was in the area. Both JS and Don Carlos had written to Granger concerning these matters, yet neither appears to have received a response. With this letter, Don Carlos attempted to deal directly with JS in order to move the business forward. Unfortunately, Don Carlos passed away on 7 August. JS apparently received the letter and, near the end of August, attempted again to contact Granger and commission him to have Don Carlos’s property in Kirtland deeded to , Don Carlos’s widow.
Don Carlos was going to Cincinnati with Ebenezer Robinson to “settle with Mr. Shepherd, and also to lay in a stock of paper and other printing material,” as Robinson later recalled. Don Carlos and Robinson had been coeditors of the Times and Seasons and had also printed a new edition of the Book of Mormon in 1840. (Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” Return [Davis City, IA], June 1890, 287.)
The Return. Davis City, IA, 1889–1891; Richmond, MO, 1892–1893; Davis City, 1895–1896; Denver, 1898; Independence, MO, 1899–1900.
and have contracted new ones by borrowing of “Peter to pay Paul,” (as the maxim runs) I owe about five hundred dollars in all; I have papers on hand <and accounts> to the amount of 800 or 1000 dollars, and <accounts> The printing establishment, aparatus &c. is worth $1500,00. you see by this that if I could raise five hundred dollars, to pay my debts, out of my land or in any way; it would leave me a property of $2500,00, or at least 2300,00 dollars. Now this is my exact situation, and I have written it because because I had not the opportunity of talking it, and I hope you will not think strange of this letter, because I am going away and do not know but what you could sell this land for me while I am gone. The title is good &c. &c. Would you, or could you let me have property here, for the property which has in that should be mine? I have reference to the house and lot. You can tell me all about these matters when I come home.
As it did <not> fall to my lot to get an interest in the with you by selling out &c. which, after due reflection, did not appear to <be> wisdom for the present; I feel anxious to enlarge the printing business by publishing a weekly news paper, and I think it will do well, if it should, it will be very valuable.
In June 1839 the First Presidency of the church decided to let Don Carlos Smith and Ebenezer Robinson “have the printing press and type” that had been salvaged from Missouri. The two men were commissioned to print a periodical for the church but were allowed to function independently. This arrangement gave them any profits made from the enterprise. (Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” Return [Davis City, IA], May 1890, 257.)
The Return. Davis City, IA, 1889–1891; Richmond, MO, 1892–1893; Davis City, 1895–1896; Denver, 1898; Independence, MO, 1899–1900.
In July, Don Carlos wrote to Granger, “I understand that you are the owner of the house and lot that used to be mine,” and offered to give money or Nauvoo property to reimburse Granger for what he had paid for the property. In fact, JS had already commissioned Granger a month earlier to deed Don Carlos’s former house and land in Kirtland to Don Carlos’s wife, Agnes Coolbrith Smith. (Don Carlos Smith, Nauvoo, IL, to Oliver Granger, Kirtland, OH, 11 July 1841, Don Carlos Smith, Letters to Oliver Granger, 1841, CHL; Letter to Oliver Granger, 4 May 1841.)
Smith, Don Carlos. Letters to Oliver Granger, 1841. CHL.
Don Carlos, along with his coeditor, Ebenezer Robinson, announced a plan to publish a weekly, general-interest newspaper in June 1840. By December they had abandoned the project because of a lack of subscribers. (“Proposals,” Times and Seasons, Apr. 1840, 1:96; Notice, Times and Seasons, 1 Dec. 1840, 2:234; see also Tanner, “Mormon Press in Nauvoo,” 97–98.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
Tanner, Terrence A. “The Mormon Press in Nauvoo, 1839–46.” In Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited: Nauvoo in Mormon History, edited by Roger D. Launius and John E. Hallwas, 94–118. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.