Personally appeared before me <​​> an acting Justice of the Peace in and for said , , , John Edmiston, and , all of aforesaid, and being first duly sworn, depose and say that on saturday the 15th day of June 1844, at in said certain persons, to wit; , Farmer [blank] Esqr., Luther Perry Constable, , Farmer, [blank] and another person whose name we do not know, called upon your deponent , when said they waited on him to make three propositions, viz; 1st. that we were to take up arms, join with, and go along with them to to arrest one Joseph Smith and others, about 17 in number living in — 2nd, to remove our effects to ,— or 3rd to give up our arms to them and remain neutral— and said was required to notify all the brethren in the neighborhood and report to <​the​> said committee which of these propositions we accepted, by 8 o’clock on Monday morning following, and that one of the above resolutions was to be complied with within that time. On the same day said and Luther Perry went to where your deponent was at work in a field in the same neighborhood and said they have come to notify him that said must comply with one of the above propositions, if not that said would smell thunder— And all your deponents further depose and say that they have been compelled to leave their homes and flee to for protection; for we were afraid to stay there on account of the mobs threatening to “utterly exterminate” us according to a “Warsaw Signal of Extra, of June 14th 1844,” if we staid at home, and further your deponents say not.

Subscribed and sworn to this 20th day of June, 1844,— before me—

J P Ls [p. [1]]