On 4 January 1842 JS wrote a letter from , Illinois, to in concerning a recent land purchase he had made on Bernhisel’s behalf. Bernhisel, a recent convert from , had been corresponding with JS since 6 March 1841, seeking to secure property in Nauvoo before moving there. In a letter written in July 1841, Bernhisel authorized JS to purchase a large tract of “good land” for him within a few miles of Nauvoo and sent him a certificate of deposit for $425. A month later Bernhisel sent another $40 by way of , who passed through New York City en route to Nauvoo. According to the letter featured here, Bernhisel had most recently written to JS on 11 December 1841 (with the letter mailed two days later). As correspondence between Bernhisel in New York City and JS in Nauvoo took approximately three weeks to arrive, JS likely received Bernhisel’s 11 December letter sometime at the end of December or in the first few days of January. On 4 January 1842 JS purchased sixty acres of land east of Nauvoo for Bernhisel. Later the same day he wrote the featured letter to Bernhisel to inform him of the purchase.

The original letter is apparently not extant, but took its dictation and copied part of it into JS’s letterbook, presumably before it was sent to ; a note at the bottom of the transcript indicates that it is only an excerpt. On 29 March 1842 Bernhisel sent JS the final $15 he owed for the purchase through a courier as JS requested in this letter. On 11 April 1842 Bernhisel replied to JS’s letter.