Letter from Edward Partridge, 3 January 1840
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Source Note
, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to JS and , [], 3 Jan. 1840; handwriting of ; one page; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. Includes postal markings. Transcription from a digital color image obtained in 2015.In March 1840, collected all of the papers submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in support of the church’s memorial to Congress and returned them to , Illinois. This letter was presumably still with that collection of documents when subsequent church delegations resubmitted the documents with additional petitions to the federal government. Congress apparently stored this letter with other documents it received in the 1840s relative to the church’s ongoing petitioning efforts. Those records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration sometime after its creation in 1934. Since then, the National Archives and Records Administration has had continuous custody of the document.
Footnotes
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Historical Introduction
On 3 January 1840, wrote a letter from the , Illinois, area to JS and in listing the patents Partridge held for land in , Missouri, as a of the . Several months before the church delegation left for Washington DC, church leaders started gathering legal documents and producing bills of damages to demonstrate the persecution the Saints experienced in and to quantify the property lost when they were driven from the state. Once in the capital, JS and Higbee continued to prepare a memorial to Congress requesting redress and reparations for the losses in Missouri. The men also wrote home asking for additional affidavits, letters, and legal documents to support their case. Due to the expense required to mail numerous items to Washington DC, Partridge instead sent a list of his patents with the data necessary for JS and Higbee to have the patents validated at the General Land Office in Washington.According to the postmark, mailed the letter from , Illinois, on 7 January. It probably arrived in by the end of the month. It is unknown whether JS and brought the letter to the General Land Office to certify Partridge’s claims. The letter was likely among the documents supporting the church’s memorial that Senator of submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on 17 February.
Footnotes
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1
See Letter to Edward Partridge and the Church, ca. 22 Mar. 1839; Minutes, 4–5 May 1839; and Affidavit, 20 Jan. 1840.
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2
Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Letter to Seymour Brunson and Nauvoo High Council, 7 Dec. 1839.
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3
Rohrbough, Land Office Business, chap. 12.
Rohrbough, Malcolm J. The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837. New York: Ocford University Press, 1968.
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4
Several other letters between church leaders in western Illinois and JS in Washington DC arrived within three weeks of being sent. JS and Higbee may have received this letter as early as the end of January, when they returned to Washington DC from Philadelphia. (Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839; Letter to Seymour Brunson and Nauvoo High Council, 7 Dec. 1839; Letter from Hyrum Smith, 2 Jan. 1840; Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 27 Jan. 1840, 2.)
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5
Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 Feb. 1840, 179.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
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1
Cite this page
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Document Information
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Footnotes
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The illegible characters—likely a notation indicating the weight of the letter in order to determine postage—and numbers on this line are in unidentified handwriting.
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21
JS and Higbee were staying at a boardinghouse on the corner of Missouri Avenue and Third Street in Washington DC. (Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839.)
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Postmark stamped in red ink.
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