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Appendix 4: Council of Fifty, Roll, 22 April 1845–27 December 1846

Source Note

Council of Fifty, Roll, 22 Apr. 1845–27 Dec. 1846; handwriting of ; one page; Council of Fifty, Papers, 1845–1883, CHL. Includes dockets and notation. One loose leaf, measuring 9¾ × 7¾ inches (25 × 20 cm), inscribed in ink and graphite. Clayton’s principal docket on the verso reads: “Roll. | K. of. G.”

Historical Introduction

In April 1845 created a roll on which he recorded attendance for the Council of Fifty from April 1845 to December 1846. From the beginning it was a rule of the council that members attend meetings or explain their absence, and it was expected that members arrive on time. Taking attendance and creating a roll to record attendance fit naturally into this organizational context. Although there are no extant copies of any earlier rolls, Clayton may have been assigned the task of taking roll as early as the organization of the council. However, only two sets of minutes from the JS era contain a list of members present. If a roll existed for 1844, it may have been damaged with other council papers buried by Clayton in June 1844. In this scenario, Clayton would have been unable to use the roll to supplement the minutes of the 1844 meetings when he copied the loose minutes into the surviving record books beginning in August 1844. Whatever the reason for the sparse attendance data in 1844, eighteen of the twenty sets of minutes copied into the record books following the February 1845 reorganization of the council under begin by listing those in attendance—indicating that Clayton was keeping detailed attendance records by that time.
It appears that by 1845, if not before, the council followed standard parliamentary procedure and had a roll call just after the standing chairman arrived—which determined whether a quorum was present even before the council was opened by prayer or the minutes of the previous session were read. ’s rough copies of notes of the Council of Fifty taken in Utah in the late 1840s and early 1850s reveal that he did not record attendance in those original minutes. Rather, he inserted the names of those in attendance in the fair copy of the minutes, using a separate roll for this information. Although most of the rough minutes of the Nauvoo-era council are not extant, this later pattern suggests that Clayton may have created this roll—and possibly earlier nonextant rolls—in order to note attendance in the minutes as recorded in the council’s record books.
While first recorded attendance using this roll on 22 April 1845, textual clues suggest that he created the document between 11 and 15 April. On the roll, Clayton listed the members of the council according to their seniority; when a new member was added to the council, Clayton added the name. The initial list of members includes and , who were added to the council on 11 April, but not , who joined on 15 April. Significantly, Clayton appended a list of council members to the 11 April 1845 minutes, noting that “the last of the number selected to fill up the council was this day received into the council.” He may have created a roll on this date or shortly after to reflect what appeared at that time to be the completed reorganization of the council.
When began using the roll on 22 April 1845, he initially marked only those members who were present at the meeting. By September 1845 he began to record additional details regarding members not in attendance. In his notation, he distinguished between members who were sick and those who were absent for other reasons by marking “s” or “a.” When news of ’s death reached in September 1845, Clayton began noting deaths and other reasons why members were not in attendance or were dropped from the council. Clayton used this roll to record attendance at council meetings until 27 December 1846—including five meetings in November and December 1846 whose minutes were not included in the Nauvoo record books published herein—when he filled the last available space on this roll. By the time the council next assembled two years later on 6 December 1848, Clayton had prepared a new roll, almost identical to this one.
inscribed the roll in two groupings of columns. In the following transcript, the left grouping is transcribed first, followed by the right grouping.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    See Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 Mar. and 6 May 1844.

  2. [2]

    When the council was officially organized on 11 March 1844, Clayton recorded in his journal “the List of members.” If such a list existed outside of Clayton’s journal, it did not survive. He later used the list copied into his journal to reconstruct the minutes for that first meeting. (Clayton, Journal, 11 Mar. 1844; Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 Mar. 1844.)

    Clayton, William. Journals, 1842–1845. CHL.

  3. [3]

    Council of Fifty, “Record,” 6 and 25 May 1844.

  4. [4]

    Clayton, Journal, 23 June and 3 July 1844; “The Council of Fifty in Nauvoo, Illinois.”

    Clayton, William. Journals, 1842–1845. CHL.

  5. [5]

    The two exceptions are the impromptu meeting on 27 February 1845, which Clayton did not attend, and the 13 January 1846 meeting, which Clayton noted was never formally organized because of the presence of a large number of company captains who did not belong to the council. (Clayton, Journal, 27 Feb. 1845; Council of Fifty, “Record,” 27 Feb. 1845 and 13 Jan. 1846.)

    Clayton, William. Journals, 1842–1845. CHL.

  6. [6]

    See, for example, “Rules of Order of the City Council,” 22 Jan. 1842, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; and Rules of the House, H.R. Report no. 3, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1, sec. 1 (1844).

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

    Rules of the House. H.R. Report no. 3, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. (1844).

  7. [7]

    In the surviving copies of the original minutes, Clayton indicated where the names would later be inserted by simply noting “present.” (See, for example, Minutes, 24 Feb. and 3 Mar. 1849, Council of Fifty, Papers, 1844–1885, CHL.)

    Council of Fifty. Papers, 1844–1885. CHL.

  8. [8]

    Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 and 15 Apr. 1845.

  9. [9]

    For Dunham, he indicated death with “D,” but in the two other cases on this roll where deaths were noted, he spread the full word “Dead” across two or three columns. For other kinds of notations, see the entry for John E. Page on the first table below and the entries for Lucian R. Foster and John Taylor on the second table.

  10. [10]

    Roll, 6 Dec. 1848–4 Mar. 1849, Council of Fifty, Papers, 1845–1883, CHL.

    Council of Fifty. Papers, 1845–1883. CHL.

Page [2]

Roll.
K. of. G. [p. [2]]
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Document Information

Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Appendix 4: Council of Fifty, Roll, 22 April 1845–27 December 1846
ID #
11611
Total Pages
2
Print Volume Location
JSP, CFM:535–540
Handwriting on This Page
  • William Clayton

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