Between 20 June 1842 and 20 June 1844, member wrote a letter from , Jo Daviess County, Illinois, to JS in , Hancock County, Illinois, to bring to his attention a potential site for a settlement. McClanathan had been an in 1840 and was a resident of . In his letter, McClanathan explained that he had found a promising location for a settlement of Latter-day Saints while visiting his sister in Jo Daviess County. McClanathan suggested that the lead mining in the area might appeal to immigrants from the British Isles who had experience in that line of work. He also raised the possibility of building factories at the proposed site to manufacture red and white lead. Most of McClanathan’s letter was used to tout the site’s advantages, from its natural beauty to its practical benefits. He even included a detailed map to convey the location’s appealing features. McClanathan stated that he was writing to JS “By request”—possibly at the invitation of a pair of major landowners in the area who were contemplating westward emigration and were interested in selling.

While the letter bears the date 20 June, it does not indicate the year in which it was written. Given the inclusion of a docket by on the letter, it was likely written in or after June 1842, when Clayton became a scribe to JS, and no later than 20 June 1844, since JS died later that month. The letter is arranged in the JS Collection among letters written in 1844. The letter may have been filed with documents produced at the end of JS’s life because of its uncertain year.

’s letter was postmarked on 27 June, a week after it was written, at . If the letter was written in 1844, JS never received it, although the letter apparently did arrive in and was preserved among his papers.

The following transcript presents the text of the letter followed by the hand-drawn map. The transcript divides the map into five rectangular sections, with the transcript of the text found on each section. These five sections were not numbered originally but are numbered here for the reader’s convenience. Any text that was written upside down or at an angle is transcribed right side up.