, Nauvoo Town Lot Order, to , [, Hancock Co., IL], 6 Mar. 1840; handwriting of ; one page; JS Office Papers, CHL.
Slip of paper, measuring 1⅜ × 7¾ inches (3 × 20 cm). Uneven cuts on the top, bottom, and right edge of the slip indicate it was excised from a larger leaf and possibly from a book. Four printed blue horizontal lines are visible. The right quarter of the slip was folded, and the slip was then folded in half.
The order was either received or created in JS’s office. It may have been kept together with similar orders in a wrapper labeled “Receipts and orders handed in by H. G. Sherwood.”
This lot was located on land purchased from the partnership of Horace Hotchkiss, Smith Tuttle, and John Gillet. It was in the north part of the Nauvoo town plat at the southwest corner of the intersection of Brattle and Barnett streets. According to information provided by Alanson Ripley in June 1840, town lots measured eleven by twelve rods (181½ by 198 feet, or nearly five-sixths of an acre). (Trustees Land Book A, Hotchkiss Purchase, [5]–[6]; Alanson Ripley, “Nauvoo,” Times and Seasons, June 1840, 1:123.)
Trustees Land Books / Trustee-in-Trust, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Land Books, 1839–1845. 2 vols. CHL. MS 3437.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
The Nauvoohigh council had set the “standard price” for Nauvoo lots at $500 but had said that none would be sold for less than $200 or more than $800. (Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 21 Oct. 1839, 26.)
Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 1839–1845. CHL. LR 3102 22.