The journal is a makeshift notebook containing sixteen leaves measuring 10 × 4 inches (25 × 10 cm). It was fashioned by folding eight 10 × 8 inch (25 × 20 cm) sheets of paper in half lengthwise to form the sixteen leaves (thirty-two pages). Inscriptions that reach the end of a line and cross the gutter onto the conjugal leaf indicate that the folded pages were not sewn during their original use. Wear on the first and last pages indicates that the pages were not bound for some time. The text of the journal is inscribed on the first fifteen pages. The remaining seventeen pages are blank. At some point, a cover for the notebook was made with a 10 × 16 inch (25 × 41 cm) sheet of blue cover stock folded in half twice to create a 10 × 4 inch cover, which was then pamphlet bound with hand stitching. On the front cover, wrote “Minute Book. | 1839 | J. Smiths Journal | Escape from Prison” with seven decorative underlines. On the back cover, the lines “Joseph Smith’s Journal | Escape from Prison 1839” are written sideways near the top. This notation, in unidentified handwriting, appears to be an early archival marking. Textual redactions and use marks made in graphite were added by later scribes who used the journal to produce the multivolume manuscript history of the church.

This thin journal was probably among the miscellaneous documents collectively listed in Nauvoo and early Utah inventories of church records. The use of the journal in connection with the manuscript history, early inventories, and recent archival records indicate that this journal—like the other JS journals—has remained in continuous institutional custody.