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Agreement with Ebenezer and Elender Moore Wiggins, 14 May 1841
Source Note
Source Note
and Elender Moore Wiggins, Agreement, with JS, , Hancock Co., IL, 14 May 1841; handwriting of JS; signature of ; mark of Elender Moore Wiggins; one page; JS Collection (Supplement), CHL. Includes notations and docket.
Single leaf, measuring 13 × 8 inches (33 × 20 cm) and ruled horizontally with thirty-five blue lines. The agreement was written on the recto only. The document was folded for filing and docketed. The leaf has some separation along the folds and tearing on the outer edges.
The docket by , who served in a clerical capacity for JS from 1841 to 1842, indicates the document was retained by the office of JS in 1841. Sometime between 1974 and 1984, the document was added to the JS Collection (Supplement) at the Church Historical Department (now CHL).
Footnotes
- [1]
See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection (Supplement), 1833–1844, in the CHL catalog.
Historical Introduction
Historical Introduction
On 14 May 1841, JS entered an agreement to exchange property with and Elender Moore Wiggins. The Wigginses were residents and recent converts who lived just north of on a farm they acquired from and Cyril Call in 1839. The Wigginses agreed to sell JS their farm—valued at $2,700—in exchange for $1,000 in Nauvoo city property, $100 in goods, and three annual payments of $533.33 in cash.
JS wrote the agreement featured here, and signed it for himself and his wife, though Elender also marked it with an “X.” The next day, on 15 May 1841, Ebenezer Wiggins officially deeded the property to ; for unknown reasons, JS was not named on that deed, despite the agreement featured here. The agreement was filed in JS’s office, and the deed was recorded in the record book six weeks later.
Footnotes
- [1]
Anson Call and Cyril Call joined the church in Ohio in the early 1830s. Cyril was father to Anson, and the two followed other migrating Saints to Missouri in 1838. There the Calls purchased land from Missouri residents “at the three forks of the Grand River.” The following year, the Calls sold this Missouri land, with a questionable title, to Ebenezer Wiggins. A July 1839 deed from the Calls to Wiggins specified that if the Missouri land Wiggins had purchased from the Calls did not have a good title, then Wiggins would be “entitled to a good and suficient deed” for land in section 30 of Hancock County, the farm land featured in this deed. (Call, Autobiography and Journal, 9; “Record of the Quorum of the Lesser Priesthood,” 76; Cyril Call and Anson Call to Ebenezer Wiggins, Deed, Hancock Co., IL, 25 July 1839; Ebenezer and Elender Moore Wiggins to Emma Smith, Deed, Hancock Co., IL, 15 May 1841, Hiram Kimball, Collection, CHL.)
Call, Anson. Autobiography and Journal, ca. 1857–1883. CHL. MS 313.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Record of Members Collection, 1836–1970. CHL. CR 375 8.
Kimball, Hiram. Collection, 1830–1910. CHL.
- [2]
Promissory notes signed by JS on 15 May 1841 reveal JS intended to pay $533.33 annually for the years 1842–1844. Although one of the three promissory notes is no longer extant, the first note includes a notation made in December 1844 indicating that some payment had been fulfilled. (JS to Ebenezer Wiggins, Promissory Notes, Nauvoo, IL, 15 May 1841, JS Collection, CHL.)
- [3]
Emma Smith and Ebenezer Wiggins, Agreement, Nauvoo, IL, 15 May 1841, JS Collection (Supplement), CHL; Ebenezer and Elender Moore Wiggins to Emma Smith, Deed, Hancock Co., IL, 15 May 1841, Hiram Kimball, Collection, CHL.
- [4]
Hancock County recorder Chauncey Robison certified the deed and attested to its presence in the Book of Mortgages and Bonds. (Ebenezer and Elender Moore Wiggins to Emma Smith, Deed, Hancock Co., IL, 15 May 1841, Hiram Kimball, Collection, CHL.)
<May> 14th 1841
and El<en>der [Moore] Wiggins agrees to sell to Joseph Smith their farm containing two hundred and thirty two acres of land on the following conditions The <They are> a to have a deed for one of the best <city> lots in <at 1000 dollars> and one hundred dollers in goods in hand and the remainder to be in mony to be paid in three yearly payments with interest from this date Said Smith is to have the possession of the primices <immediately> with all the spring work and the Crops now on the same with the excepttion of the house which they <which they live in> are to have a reasonable time to obtain one some where els they are not to be distressed on account of the house the rents of those who have rented any portion <of said farm> is to come to said smith
X Elender Wiggins—
100
1000
1100
2700
1100
3/ 1600
533-33 [p. [1]]
Source Note
Source Note
Document Transcript
Document Information
Document Information
Footnotes
Footnotes
- [1]
The Wiggins farm consisted of land in both the northeast and northwest quarters of section 30 of Hancock County.
- [2]
A notation on the verso of one of the three original 1841 promissory notes from JS to Wiggins shows the payment as being $533.33 with an added interest of $365.33, for a total outstanding amount of $898.66, which was apparently due October 1852. (JS to Ebenezer Wiggins, Promissory Notes, Nauvoo, IL, 15 May 1841, JS Collection, CHL.)
- [3]
Two extant receipts from May 1841 show JS receiving payment and goods from the Wiggins farm, likely from tenants renting portions of the land. (JS, Receipt, Nauvoo, IL, to John Roberts, 28 May 1841, JS Collection, CHL; JS, Receipt, Nauvoo, IL, to Reuben Hartson, 28 May 1841, Newel K. Whitney, Papers, BYU.)
Signature of Ebenezer Wiggins.
- [4]
TEXT: In the manuscript, this “X,” in the handwriting of Elender Wiggins, appears between “Elender” and “Wiggins—” in the same line. The next day, Elender similarly marked the deed to Emma Smith with an “X”. Ebenezer then signed the deed for himself and his wife and added the notation “her mark” next to the “X”. (Ebenezer and Elender Moore Wiggins to Emma Smith, Deed, Hancock Co., IL, 15 May 1841, Hiram Kimball, Collection, CHL.)
Elender Wiggins’s name is in the handwriting of Ebenezer Wiggins.
- [5]
TEXT: Calculations in unidentified handwriting.
- [6]
These calculations are the itemized charges and deductions of the land transaction. The amounts of $100 and $1,000 refer to the $100 worth of goods and the $1,000 worth of Nauvoo property that JS gave the Wigginses as partial payment for their farm. That amount, totaling $1,100, was deducted from the farm’s property value of $2,700. The remaining balance of $1,600 was divided into three annual cash payments of $533.33, as reflected here and in promissory notes that were created the next day. (JS to Ebenezer Wiggins, Promissory Notes, Nauvoo, IL, 15 May 1841, JS Collection, CHL.)