Introduction to Nauvoo City Council Records
The
Nauvoo City Council Records consist of documents created
by and for the city council of , Illinois, from 1841 to 1845. These documents were
retained and organized by city recorders , ,
and and were brought to the
Salt Lake Valley when the Latter-day Saints migrated from in
1846–1847.
Included are minutes, motions, bills, petitions, ordinances,
resolutions, and committee reports.
The Nauvoo City Council was formed in February 1841 under authority
granted by the December 1840
act
incorporating the city of Nauvoo. The council consisted of
a mayor, aldermen, councilors, and a recorder. served as mayor of
and head
of the city council from 3 February 1841 until his resignation on 17
May 1842. JS was a city councilor from 3
February 1841 to 19 May 1842, the day the council elected him mayor.
He served in that capacity until his death on 27 June 1844. JS was
heavily involved in the council early on, serving on numerous
committees and frequently proposing new bills and motions. Once he
became mayor, he withdrew from committee work but took an active
role in leading the council and performing the other administrative
work required of the mayor. Because of the threat of extradition to
and his many other responsibilities, JS was less
involved in the council in 1842 and 1843, but his participation
again became more frequent in May and June 1844. After JS’s death,
was elected mayor on 10
August 1844.
The
Nauvoo City Council followed traditional parliamentary procedure in
its meetings, with the mayor acting as chair of the meeting and a
majority of council members needing to be present to convene. enumerated these procedures
and the duties of city officers in the “
Rules of Order of
the City Council of the City of Nauvoo,” which he
presented to the city council on 22 January 1842.
These rules also laid out the procedures for debate and the process
for discussing and reviewing various matters, ensuring a set
approach for handling requests from residents (petitions), requests
for payment (claims), requests from city council members (motions),
and propositions of new laws or ordinances (bills). These written
documents were presented to the council and then read and discussed.
In the course of the council meeting, the documents might be amended
or sent to a specific committee, which would evaluate them and make
a report to the council.
Committee reports were either written or given verbally. After
discussion and, where necessary, committee review, the petition,
claim, motion, or bill would be accepted, rejected, or tabled for
additional discussion.
If a petition, claim, or motion was accepted, it
usually resulted in the council passing a resolution that the mayor
then signed.
Resolutions did not necessarily mean the council generated a new
document; the status of acceptance or rejection might simply be
noted on the original petition, claim, or motion. If a bill was
accepted, the city council passed an ordinance that the mayor
signed. Additional documents, like appointments, went
through a similar process of rejection or acceptance. In instances
where a motion or bill served as a draft of the resolution or
ordinance, the Joseph Smith Papers website presents the document in
its original form (i.e., as the motion or bill, not the resolution
or ordinance).

Although many city council records were kept, not all
of the documents created by the council are extant. The
Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute books provide the best
indication of the complete process and the persons involved. Where
documents are extant, links are included in the rough minute books
to the individual documents.
On the Joseph Smith Papers website, the Nauvoo City
Council records are presented in two categories under “Browse the
Papers.” The first category, “
Nauvoo City Council Minute Books,” includes the council’s
various minute books. The second category, “
Nauvoo City Council Meetings,” reproduces the minutes of
each meeting separately, together with the extant documents
generated for each meeting.
For each
meeting, the website also provides a calendar of documents listing
all documents generated for that meeting, whether extant or not. The
calendar lists all versions of each document, with links to those
that are extant. The documents are listed in chronological order,
which is not necessarily the order they were discussed at the
meeting, since some documents such as petitions and claims were
written prior to the council meeting at which they were presented.
If a document was discussed at more than one meeting, it is listed
only on the calendar for the meeting where it was initially
discussed. Footnotes in the calendar indicate any further actions
the city council took with regard to the document. In addition to
consulting the calendar of documents, researchers will benefit from
studying the minutes themselves, which include links to documents
that were brought up in the meeting.
Documents are included on a calendar only if there is sufficient
evidence that an actual document was generated. Though the council
professed to be following parliamentary procedure, including the
stipulation that all motions, amendments, reports, and so forth be
written down, it is unclear how scrupulous their record keeping was
in practice. The Joseph Smith Papers Project takes a very
conservative approach in determining if documents were actually
created. If the only mention of a motion or report is in the
minutes, and there is no indication that the document was read at
the meeting, the document is not listed on the calendar. For
example, if the minutes state that “upon motion it was resolved that
. . . ,” the calendar lists the resolution but not the motion, since
it is not clear the motion was written down.
The
Nauvoo
City Council Minute Book started out as a traditional
minute book, with copying the rough minutes
directly into the minute book and adding the full texts of
resolutions and ordinances. Early in 1842, Sloan stopped copying the
minutes themselves and only copied the texts of resolutions and
ordinances passed. He also copied in the signature of the president
of the council (usually the mayor), showing that each document had
been authorized. Each copy is therefore included in the calendar as
a separate document or version. Not every document Sloan copied was
a resolution or ordinance, but because other items (such as “minute
entry,” “approval of petition/claim,” or “appointment”) still
included the president’s signature, they also appear as separate
documents on the calendar.