The last extant set of minutes for a council meeting in Clay County, Missouri, is for 25 July 1836. These minutes conclude with a resolution to “search out land for the Church to settle upon &c.” This resolution, which was part of the effort to relocate the Missouri Saints and provide land for new immigrants, resulted in the purchase of land along Shoal Creek for the settlement of Far West. Minutes from a 10 November 1837 council meeting were published in a Kirtland issue of the Elders’ Journal. When publication of the paper recommenced in Far West, the first issue included a letter from Marsh that contained the minutes of a “general assembly” that the high council initiated, in which Zion church presidents William W. Phelps and John Whitmer were removed from office; the minutes of the 10 March 1838 council meeting in which Phelps and Whitmer were excommunicated; and the minutes of the 7–8 April 1838 quarterly conference, held “agreeable to a resolution of the high council,” in which new officers were appointed. (Minute Book 2, 25 July 1836; Gentry and Compton, Fire and Sword, 28–36; Minutes, 10 Nov. 1837, Elders’ Journal, Nov. 1837, 30–31; “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee of the Whole Church in Zion,” Elders’ Journal, July 1838, 44–46; “Minutes of High Council,” Elders’ Journal, July 1838, 46; “Conference Minutes,” Elders’ Journal, July 1838, 47.)

Gentry, Leland Homer, and Todd M. Compton. Fire and Sword: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri, 1836–39. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011.

Greene, a member of the high council, was substituting for high council clerk Ebenezer Robinson. (Minutes, 6 Apr. 1838; Minutes, 7–8 Apr. 1838.)