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Account with Estate of Oliver Granger, between circa 3 February and circa 2 March 1842

Source Note

JS, Account, with estate of , [between ca. 3 Feb. and ca. 2 Mar. 1842]; handwriting of ; signature of JS; one page; JS, Papers, 1839–1844, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield, IL. Includes docket and archival marking. Transcription from digital color image obtained in 2009.
Single leaf measuring 12¼ × 7⅝ inches (31 × 19 cm). The document was folded in half twice for filing, and it was docketed by .
It is unclear who retained the document in the years after it was created. In 1946 the State Historical Library (now Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum) acquired the account from Morris H. Briggs, a rare-book dealer who operated in from the 1920s to the 1950s. After 1972 the library placed the account and other JS documents acquired over approximately thirty years into an artificial collection with different fonds called the Joseph Smith Papers.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Briggs, Buying and Selling Rare Books; Vinson, Edward Eberstadt and Sons: Rare Booksellers of Western Americana, 72–73; Correspondence between Joseph Smith Papers editors and manuscripts curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL, 15 May 2017, copy in editors’ possession.

    Briggs, Morris H. Buying and Selling Rare Books. New York: R.R. Bowker Co, 1927.

    Vinson, Michael. Edward Eberstadt and Sons: Rare Booksellers of Western Americana. Norman, OK: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2016.

Historical Introduction

Between early February and early March 1842, , Illinois, attorney , acting under the direction of JS, produced an account statement outlining the debts that JS believed the estate of owed to him. Granger began acting as a financial for leaders in 1837 and continued in that capacity through the late 1830s. In April 1840 JS signed an agreement transferring to Granger the debts that JS and other church leaders had previously incurred on the church’s behalf. Over the following year Granger traveled to and and successfully satisfied several of the debts, including paying off the mortgage on the in , Ohio.
While was in the East settling debts, JS apparently made payments on Granger’s behalf in . The featured account lists several debts that Granger had accrued from these payments between May 1839 and July 1841. The payments ranged from $40 to $2,000 and totaled $5,883.50. The account was likely produced in preparation for probate proceedings connected to Oliver Granger’s estate or for a settlement with Granger’s son . Oliver Granger died from an illness in in late August 1841 without settling all of the church debts or transferring the relevant financial papers to another church agent. A 3 February 1842 entry in JS’s journal notes that JS spent the day counseling with attorney “concerning a Settlement with the estate of Oliver Granger” and “delivered him the necessary papers accordingly.” Warren likely inscribed the account sometime between 3 February, when he received these papers, and 2 March, when JS began meeting with Gilbert Granger to negotiate a settlement over Oliver Granger’s estate. According to JS’s journal and a later history, the negotiations with Gilbert Granger “failed to effect any thing” because he refused to give up his father’s financial papers despite JS providing “Deeds, Mortgages and Paper to the amount of some thousands against his Father more than he had against the Church.”
It is not known whether a copy of the featured text was submitted to a probate court or the administrator of ’s estate, or whether JS received payment or other satisfaction on the debts listed in the account.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    See Power of Attorney to Oliver Granger, 27 Sept. 1837; Letter of Introduction from John Howden, 27 Oct. 1838; and Agreement with Mead & Betts, 2 Aug. 1839.

  2. [2]

    Agreement with Oliver Granger, 29 Apr. 1840.

  3. [3]

    Letter to Oliver Granger, 26 Jan. 1841. It appears that Granger used land to pay off some of the temple debt. In fall 1840 Granger traveled to Oswego County, New York, where he purchased the farms of several church members, including ten acres of land from Thomas and Elizabeth King, using land in the Nauvoo area as payment. In February 1841 Granger sold the Kings’ former property to Zalmon H. Mead and Robert W. Mead, partners in a firm that owned the mortgage on the House of the Lord in Kirtland. (Benjamin Elsworth, Palermo, NY, 18 Oct. 1840, Letter to the Editor, Times and Seasons, 15 Nov. 1840, 2:219–220; Benjamin Elsworth, Palermo, NY, to Oliver Granger, 28 Jan. 1841, CHL; Agreement with Mead & Betts, 2 Aug. 1839; Oswego Co., NY, Deeds, 1792–1902, vol. 32, pp. 32–33, 10 Oct. 1840; pp. 33–34, 9 Oct. 1840; pp. 34–35, 10 Oct. 1840; pp. 35–36, 9 Oct. 1840; vol. 33, pp. 115–116, 22 Feb. 1841, microfilm 1,011,773, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.)

    Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

    Elsworth, Benjamin C. Letter, Palermo, NY, to Oliver Granger, 28 Jan. 1841. In Benjamin C. Elsworth, Letters, Palermo, New York, to Oliver Granger, Kirtland, Ohio, 1841. CHL.

    U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.

  4. [4]

    See also JS, Journal, 3 Mar. 1842; and JS History, vol. C-1, 1286.

  5. [5]

    After an individual passed away, the estate’s administrator often put a notice in the newspaper informing residents that anyone indebted to or holding claims against the deceased should submit that information to the probate court. Although no such notice for Granger’s estate has been located, the fact that witnesses were listed for all but one of the line items suggests that the document was prepared for eventual use in court. (See, for example, “The Estate of Joshua C. Alexander,” Sangamo Journal [Springfield, IL], 12 Sept. 1844, [3].)

    Sangamo Journal. Springfield, IL. 1831–1847.

  6. [6]

    Obituary for Oliver Granger, Times and Seasons, 15 Sept. 1841, 2:550.

    Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

  7. [7]

    JS, Journal, 3 Feb. 1842.

  8. [8]

    JS, Journal, 2–3 Mar. 1842; see also Memorandum of Deeds, 3 Mar. 1842.

  9. [9]

    JS, Journal, 3 Mar. 1842; JS History, vol. C-1, 1286.

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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Account with Estate of Oliver Granger, between circa 3 February and circa 2 March 1842
ID #
6844
Total Pages
2
Print Volume Location
JSP, D9:207–211
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