Trustee in trust

A trustee was a legally appointed individual who held and administered property or assets for the benefit of another individual, group of people, or an organization. The trustee was entrusted to protect and preserve the property of the trust given to him. When the was incorporated in in January 1841, JS was made the trustee for the church. To comply with the Illinois statute related to the incorporation of religious organizations, a special church conference was held on 30 January 1841 where JS was elected as “sole trustee in-trust” for the church. Notice of JS’s election was filed with the Hancock County, Illinois, recorder three days later. While JS and other Latter-day Saints used the title “trustee-in-trust,” this was not a recognized legal position or title outside of Latter-day Saint usage. Legally, JS was simply a trustee. The Saints may have taken this title from the nineteenth-century legal phrase “trustee in trust, for,” which was boilerplate legal language in records related to trustees. With use in and later in Utah, the name became commonplace among Latter-day Saints and developed into a default title for the designated church trustee or trustees.