On 30 October 1841 the City Council, including JS, met to address several issues. After holding intermittent meetings in summer 1841, the council resumed a more consistent meeting schedule in mid-October; they had already met twice before convening on 30 October 1841. At this meeting, council members discussed whether to remit the fine imposed on by a jury after his recent conviction for assault and battery before the Nauvoo mayor’s court. They also conversed about a variety of city planning issues, including an overdue report on a city cemetery, improving streets in Nauvoo, and the removal of a building in the city that had been declared a nuisance. The 30 October meeting also included the appointment and swearing in of several city officers.
, the city recorder, inscribed rough minutes of the 30 October meeting in a notebook. Sloan then used those original minutes to record the official minutes in the council’s ledger. Because the ledger contains a more comprehensive version of the council’s discussion and decisions and represents the official minutes, that is the version featured here.
Counsellor J. Smith moved, that one hundred & twenty five Dollars, be appropriated for Damages, for the Building which was removed on the Hill, as a Nuisance.
On 23 October 1841, JS proposed a resolution that four houses in Nauvoo be declared nuisances. One of the houses was to be removed by Monday, 25 October—“a small frame House upon the Hill, near, the Temple Lot,” kept by John Eagle and Pulaski Cahoon, son of prominent Latter-day SaintReynolds Cahoon. However, a later JS history states that the action did not take place until 30 October, when JS, “in obedience to an order from the Mayor . . . called out two Companies of the Nauvoo Legion, and removed a Grog shop, kept by Pulaski S. Cahoon, which had been declared a nuisance by the City Council.” An article in the Times and Seasons described Cahoon’s shop as a small building kept “for the purpose of transacting the business of a Grocer.” In other words, the shop traded in tea, sugar, spices, coffee, liquors, and fruits. The article noted the public’s disapprobation with the business and indicated that the building was a “lonely wreck of folly.” Although Cahoon is not named here, JS was evidently submitting Cahoon’s petition requesting the city council to cover the damages caused by the destruction. (Nauvoo City Council Minute Book, 23 Oct. 1841, 24; JS History, vol. C-1, 1242; “The Neusance,” Times and Seasons, 15 Nov. 1841, 3:599; Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute Book, 23 and 30 Oct.; 1 Nov. 1841, 25–30, 33–34; Docket Entry, between 25 Oct. and ca. 29 Nov. 1841, State of Illinois v. Eagle [Nauvoo Mayor’s Ct. 1841], in Nauvoo Mayor’s Court Docket Book, 12.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.