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Trustee-in-Trust Ledger A, December 1841–May 1845–301

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Trustee-in-Trust Ledger A, December 1841–May 1845

Source Note

Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger, [, Hancock Co., IL], Dec. 1841–May 1845; inscribed [ca. Oct. 1842–7 Aug. 1845]; handwriting of , , , , and unidentified scribe; 380 pages; Trustee-in-Trust Ledgers, 1841–1846, CHL.
The distribution of tithing goods and funds was inscribed in a large commercially produced blank ledger measuring 14½ × 10¼ × 1¾–2 inches (37 × 26 × 4–5 cm). The paper was printed in ledger style with thirty-nine or forty blue horizontal lines, one red horizontal double line at the top, and seven columns demarcated by two red vertical lines on the left side of the page and two red vertical double lines and two red vertical single lines on the right side of the page. The pages measure 14 × 9¾ inches (36 × 25 cm). The text block was formed with twenty-seven gatherings of eight leaves, for a total of 216 leaves, or 432 pages. There are three flyleaves in the front of the volume and three flyleaves in the back of the volume. The leaf edges are stained green. Marbled papers with a blue body and veins of white, red, and yellow are glued to the inside covers of the pasteboards and to the exterior page of each gathering of flyleaves. The exterior endpapers are joined to the pasteboards with a strip of brown cloth. The text block is bound in a ledger style to the boards. The spine was constructed with four false raised bands demarcating five panels. The boards and spine are covered in suede with additional burgundy leather strips over the top and bottom of the book. The suede was blind tooled on the outside covers, the raised bands of the spine, and the turned-in edges on the inside cover. The additional leather strips, which also cover the first and fifth panels of the spine, are embossed with dual lines along the borders. The spine is further embossed with the word “LEDGER” in the second panel. “Temple Committee Book A” was inscribed in ink on the spine, with “Nauvoo 1841–1845” inscribed below. A red and white archival label was later affixed to the fourth panel, obscuring most of the word “Nauvoo.”
The first twelve leaves of the text block serve as an index for the volume and include pre-printed alphabetical tabs. The final front flyleaf was repurposed as the first index page; one horizontal double line, thirty-five horizontal single lines, and 3 vertical double lines were hand drawn on the recto, and forty horizontal single lines and one vertical double line were hand drawn on the verso. The verso of the flyleaf contains one entry beginning with “A,” and the page with the “AB” tab contains one entry beginning with “B.” The index pages are unpaginated. Pagination begins on the first page following the end of the index and there is consistent pagination throughout the entirety of the volume from page 1 to the final page, 408. The first section of the volume following the index comprises invoices for goods given to the Nauvoo temple committee, as well as the names of those credited with working on the Nauvoo . On pages 200 to 208, the ledger contains accounts for an unidentified store, possibly the store run by the . From page 214 to page 359, the ledger includes accounts for individuals working for the trustee-in-trust office or doing business with the . Several pages were left blank in the volume. These include pages 1–2, 4, 6, 188–189, 245, 271, 281, 283, 289, 344–345, 349–351, 356–357, 394–399, 401, 403, and 406–407. Pages 381 to 393 contain only a heading for temple committee accounts and the remainder of the page is blank, suggesting that Clayton intended to use it to inscribe accounts with the Temple Committee but finished using the volume before reaching these pages.
Several clerks inscribed information in this volume from 1842 to 1845, including , , , , and possibly an unidentified scribe. The work was apparently reviewed and revised as demonstrated by mathematical corrections, canceled content, and clerical notes about errors. Check marks were inscribed following the monetary amounts at the bottom of several pages as reviewed and corrected the values, but those have not been reproduced in the transcript. A final review and settlement of the accounts occurred on 7 August 1845, when outstanding accounts were settled with the trustee-in-trusts, at that time and .
In Nauvoo, Trustee-in-Trust Ledger A was in the possession of the trustee-in-trust’s office, which also functioned as the tithing office, and was apparently one of two tithing record books that inventoried and delivered to in 1847. It is unknown when Trustee Ledger A was transferred to the Historian’s Office. The Clayton inventory, archival labels, and archival markings suggest continuous institutional custody.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Whitney and Miller were appointed trustees for the church on 12 August 1844 and served in that capacity until January 1846. (Newel K. Whitney and George Miller, Appointment as Trustees, 12 Aug. 1844, Nauvoo Trustees Papers, 1844–1848, CHL; Richards, Journal, 9 Aug. 1844; George Miller and Newel K. Whitney, Certificate of Election, 24 Jan. 1846, Hancock Co., IL, Bonds and Mortgages, 1840–1904, vol. 2, p. 144, microfilm 954,776, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL; Young, Journal, 24 Jan. 1846.

    Nauvoo Trustees Papers, 1844–1848. CHL.

    Richards, Willard. Journals, 1836–1853. Willard Richards, Papers, 1821–1854. CHL. MS 1490, boxes 1–2.

    U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.

    Young, Brigham. Journals, 1832–1877. Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878. CHL. CR 1234 1, boxes 71–73.

  2. [2]

    William Clayton, Inventory, 17 Mar. 1847, Newel K. Whitney Papers, BYU.

    Whitney, Newel K. Papers, 1825–1906. BYU.

Historical Introduction

In December 1841, JS reassigned responsibility for tithing donations from the to , whom he appointed as temple recorder for the . In February 1842, joined Richards in the recorder’s office, also called the tithing office. In summer 1842 as Richards prepared for an extended trip to the eastern United States, he transferred his responsibilities as temple recorder to Clayton. In September 1842, JS officially appointed Clayton as the church’s temple recorder in Richards’s place.
As temple recorders, and later were responsible for receiving donated goods and funds, recording them, and distributing them. Each step in the process of collecting and distributing tithing was tracked and carefully recorded. Richards started recording the distribution of tithing donations in a record book he titled “Index To The Book of the Law of the Lord And Accounts Current with The Temple Committee & Store Nauvoo, December, 1841.” This book is published on the Joseph Smith Papers website as the Trustee-in-Trust Account Book. Many of the distributions Richards recorded were goods given to the to help fund temple construction. When these goods were delivered to the temple committee, Richards and Clayton sent invoices itemizing the goods to accompany the distribution. In addition to inscribing the loose copies of the invoices given to the temple committee, the clerks also recorded copies of twenty-six of these invoices in the Trustee-in-Trust Account Book.
In October 1842, began running out of space in the Trustee-in-Trust Account Book and started a new record book for recording the distribution of goods. This record book, featured here, is known as Trustee-in-Trust Ledger A and picked up where the Trustee Account Book left off. Clayton and his clerk rerecorded the twenty-six invoices to the that had been copied into the Trustee-in-Trust Account Book in the Trustee Ledger and then recorded an additional five invoices for goods given to the temple committee. The final invoice—invoice 31—transitioned from a single invoice to a running account that tracked goods given to the temple committee.
The move to the larger Trustee Ledger A allowed and to give more space to the accounts for various individuals that had first been inscribed in the Trustee Account Book. These ledger-style accounts initially made up the majority of the volume. Some of the individuals with accounts in the Trustee Ledger include those working as clerks in the tithing office, such as , , and . JS was also included and the ledger records payments he received in his position as church trustee. Other individuals and organizations with accounts in the ledger had done work for the trustee (such as and ), received donations from the (such as the ), or transacted business with the church (such as ). In all these instances, the accounts in the ledger enumerate the tithing goods or credit received as payment. Because had a cash-poor economy, like many areas of the United States in the 1840s, payment for work or purchases was made in the form of goods or bartering rather than money. This included individuals being granted tithing credit for a debt or a pay order.
While invoices and accounts were the earliest inscribed content in the Trustee Ledger, accounts tracking labor on the soon filled the volume. Men who worked on the temple were given a receipt for the labor they had performed. They then submitted that receipt to the tithing office for it to be recorded in records. These accounts were initially recorded alongside the invoices given to the temple committee but soon required many more pages and were transferred from page 63 to later in the volume. Rather than using blank pages elsewhere in the book, and recorded temple committee accounts for labor on the temple from 1844 through 1845 on the blank portions of pages that had earlier contained only individual accounts. So, for example, page 256 contains both ’s account recorded in February and March 1842 as well as temple committee accounts of labor receipts for April 1845.
Pages in the ledger generally include a page number and a heading identifying the individual or organization at the top of the page. Entries include the date, the donated money or goods, the name of the donor, and the monetary value assigned to the donation. Each invoice to the has a subheading identifying the invoice number and a line at the bottom indicating when the invoice was delivered. Ditto marks were used frequently in this volume, especially when large amounts of information are repeated, such as in the temple committee accounts for labor receipts. There dittos make up the majority of the page and the only new information provided is the names of those working on the . This ledger was created in tandem with other trustee records, including the Book of the Law of the Lord, and most pages include a column on the right side of the page, between donated goods and their monetary value, containing page numbers that correspond to the pages in the Book of the Law of the Lord where these donations are recorded. In some instances, the pages listed from the Book of the Law of the Lord are incorrect. These have not been corrected in the transcript.
Clerks and inscribed the volume from October 1842 to August 1845, with assistance from and . Whitehead’s work was overseen and reviewed by Clayton. Clayton made frequent corrections when Whitehead introduced mathematical mistakes, often using a knife to erase the errors and writing the corrected amount over the previous amount. Due to the feathering created by the knife erasure, it has not been possible in every instance to identify the handwriting of the clerk making corrections. Most of these corrections were likely made by Clayton, but other clerks may have reviewed or referenced the ledger as well. The volume was used by the office clerks until 7 August 1845, when accounts were settled or transferred to other record books, such as those kept by the . This volume extends past the period when JS was replaced as a trustee in August 1844, but these entries were not removed from the transcript. Additionally, Trustee-in-Trust Ledger B has not been included as it contains entries from June 1845 to September 1846.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    JS, Journal, 11, 13 Dec. 1841; 13 Dec. 1841; “To Whom It May Concern,” Times and Seasons, 15 Dec. 1841, 3:638.

  2. [2]

    Clayton, Diary, 10 Feb. 1842; Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 18.

    Clayton, William. Diary, Vol. 1, 1840–1842. BYU.

    Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.

  3. [3]

    JS, “To the Eastern Churches,” Times and Seasons, 1 June 1842, 3:814; JS, Journal, 29 June 1842; Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 30.

    Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.

  4. [4]

    Clayton, History of the Nauvoo Temple, 30–31.

    Clayton, William. History of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1845. CHL. MS 3365.

  5. [5]

    Introduction to the Trustee Records.

  6. [6]

    Invoices 1 through 26 were recorded in the Trustee-in-Trust Account Book; see pages 28–57.

  7. [7]

    Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 7–82. Two incomplete loose copies of “Invoice No 31” are extant and in the records of the Nauvoo temple committee. (Invoice, Trustee-in-Trust to Nauvoo Temple Committee, 24 Nov. 1842–8 Feb. 1843; Invoice, Trustee-in-Trust to Nauvoo Temple Committee, 24 Nov. 1842–25 July 1843.)

  8. [8]

    See Trustee-in-Trust, Account Book, 64–69. Notations in these entries in the Trustee Account Book read “Carried to Ledger” and “To Ledger [page] 300.”

  9. [9]

    Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 214–219, 274–279, 290–299.

  10. [10]

    Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 240–249, 360–363.

  11. [11]

    Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 284–287, 316–317, 400.

  12. [12]

    See, for example, William Blackhurst’s account in Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 348.

  13. [13]

    This likely led to the inscription of “Temple Committee Book A” on the spine of the volume. Some have mistaken this as an indication that this record book belonged to the Nauvoo temple committee; however, these are not temple committee records but rather accounts between the trustee-in-trust office and the Nauvoo temple committee.

  14. [14]

    See, for example, Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 310–311.

  15. [15]

    Trustee-in-Trust, Ledger A, 279, 282.

Dr. to Contra Cr
1842 $ cts 1842
Feby 5th. To note of 76 2,050.74 Feby 26 By Cash 84 28.00
Ap[ri]l 26 By [Cash] as p[e]r endorsement on J. S. Note & c 326 105.13
26 [To] Note which gave to J. Smith in part. for Lot 1 Block 127 12 24.00 <​Transferred to T[emple] Books Augt. 7— 45​> $133.13
28 [To] $600.00 by on settlement for his farm in , Chester Co[unty] Pen[nsylvania] 15 600.00
March 22nd. <​July 8th​> [To] to s receipt for Cash 148 160.00
September 13 by account at p[ai]d. 55.56 Dr.
6 to Bill for Meal & Flour Delivered to & for Church 162 125.06 To amount brought forward 6,304.14
August 15th. by receipt of 25.00 1844 February 29 [To] am[oun]t. Credited for Improvements sold to 438 60.00
September 19th. to order given to 82.25 May 24 [To] s & Alfred Guys receipt 15 30.00
28th. [to] amount endorsed on s note 160.00 [May] 26 [To] receipt for p[ar]t payment for a Town Lot in 15 100.00
March 5th. To Endorsement on s note 86 85.00 Octr. 1st. [To] Cash pr. E[rie] Rhodes Wm. Anderson 106 23.00
April 30 [To] account cred[ited]d. to on his tithing 115 467.00 [Octr.] 17 [To] Cash pr. F. Merreyweather [Frederick Merryweather] 125 6.00
May 14 [To] Endorsement on R. Sheldons Note 119 40.00 Novr. 11 [To] Treasurers Order J[oel] H. Worthington 149 5.00
[May] 16 [To] Endorsement on s note cred. on tithing 121 325.00 [Novr.] 20 [To] Cash for Land pr 157 5.00
[May] 31 [To] Note to 140 118.94 [Novr.] 14 [To] Cloth & Cash S[amuel] Newcomb. 27.50
August 11th. [To] Account pd out of Recorders Office P248 114.35 [Novr. 14] [To] Cash paid Tomlinson 25.00
Feby. 21 [To] Certificate of Deposite Page 83 L[aw] of L[ord] for Taxes on Church property 145.00 Decr. 31 [To] E[ast]1/2 L[ot]2 B[lock]150 paid 238.35
October 24th. [To] Order on & others by &c D Book page 160 291.00 1845 Jany 7 [To] paid tithing on s Bills for Sundries 194 433.97
26th. [To] pd. s bill against Cutler & Durfee 46.96 [Jany] 13 [To] endorsement of Joseph Smith’s note pr Wm. Brown on T[ithing] 198 30.00
<[Jany] 14 [To] Cash P[ai]d. The Maid of Iowa $ 200 25.00>
Septr 24th. [To] Endorsement on Joseph Smiths Land scrip 144 12.00 [Jany] 22 [To] pt of Joseph Smiths Bond Henry Kearns [Kern] on T[ithing] 205 300.00
29th. [To] ’s receipt in favour of 10.00 [Jany] 28 [To] an ac/— [account] pr. pr. pr. Deed pr. Farm 219 132.50
[29th.] [To] s note in favour of 53.00 [January] 30 [To] an ac/— pr. H. Hoyt for. pt. of L 1 B 146 (pd sundries on T[ithing]) <​(pt to Fisher on BTC)​> 223 103.00
1843 January 11th. [To] Expenses to 10.00 Feby 5 [To] bal[ance] on s note Moses Curtis 228 7.25
[January] 30th. [To] N[orth] 1/2 of Lot 10 B2 in Fulmers purchase paid for Expenses to 155.00 [Feby] 10 [To] exchange of Lotts 231 7.00
February 17th. [To] Bent and Harris note 100.00 April 26 [To] Cash as pr endorsement on J. S. Note &c— 326 105.13
March 8th. [To] Cash per James Culbertson Ellenor Monfort &c 294 14.00 Transferred to T[emple] Books Augt. 7. 45 7,967.84
April 22nd. [To] Cash pd. for expenses to 1.00 [12 lines blank]
May 9th. [To] Cash for expenses to 2.50
June 9th. [To] & receipt Credited John Haven on tithing 315 9.50
April 29th. [To] 1 Log House Credited to Isaac H Loose on tithing 305 12.00
June 26th. [To] Cash 326 25.00
July 10th. [To] Cash 329 10.75
[July] 12th. [To] Cash 330 50.00
[July] 13th. [To] Store goods pd. to on J. S. note 330 76.25
September 13th. [To] Cash 351 4.00
1844 January 12th. [To] bal[ance] of receipt Value $3,200.00 405 593.28
<[January] 3 [To] and s receipt 402 100.00>
March 18 [To] s note against &c; 451 150.00
Car[rie]d. forward $6,304.14
[p. 300–301]
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Source Note

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Document Information

Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Trustee-in-Trust Ledger A, December 1841–May 1845
ID #
18450
Total Pages
419
Print Volume Location
Handwriting on This Page
  • William Clayton
  • John McEwan
  • James Whitehead

Footnotes

  1. [81]

    In January 1835, Tanner loaned the Kirtland, Ohio, temple building committee $2,000 to help with the construction costs of the Kirtland temple. In return, he received a promissory note for repayment at a later date. By 1842, the note had $50.74 worth of interest owed to Tanner. In February 1842, Tanner returned that note to the church as consecration, meaning he would no longer require repayment of the loan. It is unclear whether Tanner previously planned to be repaid for his generous loan seven years earlier, but by turning in the note he ensured that there would be no repayment and that the initial loan would be considered a donation by his descendants. (See F. G. Williams & Co., Account Book, 20; and Tanner, “History of John Tanner.”)

    Tanner, Nathan. “History of John Tanner,” no date. CHL. MS 14605.

  2. new scribe logo

    This and the following entry on this page of the spread are in the handwriting of John McEwan.

  3. [82]

    Isaac Galland, acting as a financial agent for JS and the church, had purchased Peirce’s farm in Brandywine, Pennsylvania, for $5,000 in 1841. JS’s journal relates that JS reached a settlement with Peirce, paying the remaining balance of $2,700 with land in Nauvoo on 28 February 1842. This entry for $600 appears to be an additional part of the settlement not mentioned in JS’s journal. (JS, Journal, 28 Feb. 1842; Letter from Robert Peirce, 28 Feb. 1842; Historical Introduction to Letter from Robert Peirce, 28 Feb. 1842; see also Book of the Law of the Lord, Book A, 85.)

  4. new scribe logo

    This and the following four entries on this page of the spread are in the handwriting of James Whitehead.

  5. new scribe logo

    This and the following thirteen entries on this page of the spread are in the handwriting of James Whitehead.

  6. new scribe logo

    This and the following seven entries on this page of the spread are in the handwriting of William Clayton.

  7. new scribe logo

    The remainder of this page of the spread is in the handwriting of James Whitehead.

  8. new scribe logo

    The remainder of this page of the spread is in the handwriting of John McEwan, unless otherwise noted.

  9. new scribe logo

    This entry and the accompanying amount are in the handwriting of William Clayton.

  10. [83]

    TEXT: Double underlined.

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