As had been appointed in the council meeting on 13 January 1846, the council met in the on 19 January along with captains of the emigrating companies around 10:00 a.m. The deliberations reflected the urgency the Latter-day Saints felt in preparing for the emigration from . During the meeting decided that the captains of hundreds and fifties should create a report on the preparedness of their companies by visiting each family and determining “who shall go and who shall not go.” This may have been a reference to the organization of an all-male advance company—Young referred to it as a “Pioneer Co— 100 ready at a moments warning”—that would leave for the West ahead of most of the Saints. , one of the company captains in attendance at this meeting, recorded in his diary that the council “decided among other things that the Capt of the different emegrating companies should arrainge & prepare as many of their men to start for the West and leave their families as could.” Four days later referenced these plans in his journal, noting that “many are dissatisfied because the Twelve & some others are going West without taking the whole Church. . . . The arrangements are made by which the whole church can go comfortably, but it is necessary that some men should go beforehand to prepare a place for the rest and the Twelve & some others have to go to save their lives for their are plans laid for their destruction.” On 4 February 1846 Latter-day Saints began to leave Nauvoo for the West. Although Young and other church leaders planned for an advance company to travel to the sometime that year, poor weather in and a lack of organization prevented this plan from materializing.

kept minutes of this meeting on loose paper that he never copied into the council’s record book. This appears to have been the last formal meeting of the Council of Fifty in . The council next convened on 12 November 1846 at Winter Quarters on the . explained the lengthy gap by noting that “in our hurried & scattered condition it has not been convenient to call the c[ouncil] together.”