Warrant, 24 May 1842 [State of Illinois v. C. L. Higbee]
Source Note
, Warrant, [], Hancock Co., IL, to sheriffs, coroners, and constables, for , 24 May 1842, State of IL v. C. L. Higbee (Nauvoo, IL, Justice of the Peace Court 1842); handwriting of ; certified by , 24 May 1842; docket by , [, Hancock Co., IL, 24 May 1842]; notations by Lewis Robison, 24 May 1842; notation by , [, Hancock Co., IL], 14 Sept. 1842; two pages; Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860, BYU. Includes seal.
Upon appeal, this and other case documents from the justice of the peace court were forwarded to the , Illinois, circuit court and filed in 1842. This document remained in the custody of the circuit court until at least 1968, when Richard and Pamela Price made a photocopy of it. A portion of the case documents and several other Hancock County records had been acquired by Pearl Gordon Vestal, a local historian from Hamilton, Illinois, by 1958. After her death, her family sold them to manuscript collector David C. Martin in 1973. In 1975, Martin sold the court records to the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. Later that year, library staff merged the Martin acquisition with two distinct document accretions from manuscript collectors Steven Barnett and Peter Crawley.
Price and Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, 1:144–145, 158–159; David C. Martin, Nauvoo, IL, to Chad Flake, Provo, UT, 8 Aug. 1973, in Case File for Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860, BYU.
Price, Richard, and Pamela Price. Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy: Volume 1. Independence, MO: Price Pub. Co., 2000.
Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860. Twentieth-Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts. BYU.
Approximately eleven different collections were subsequently added to the collection in 1980. (Bibliographic entry for Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860, BYU; Willard C. Smith, “Hancock County, Illinois Legal Documents,” 1980, in Case File for Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860, BYU.)
Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Legal Documents, 1839–1860. Twentieth-Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts. BYU.
The people of the State of , to all Sheriffs, coronors and constables of said , Greeting:
Whereas complaint has been made before me, one of the Justices of the Peace in and for the aforesaid, upon the oath of Joseph Smith, that , late of the aforesaid did, at sundry times, slander the character of the said Joseph Smith, and also the character of , his wife.
These are therefore, to command you to take the said , if he be found in your county; or if he shall have fled, that you pursue after the said into any other county within this , and take and safely keep the said so that you have his body forthwith before me, or some other justice of the Peace to answer the said complaint, and be further dealt with according to law—
Given under my hand and seal this 24th day of May A. D. 1842.