Pay Order to Nauvoo City Treasurer for James Sloan, 30 January 1843
Source Note
JS as mayor, Pay Order, to Nauvoo city treasurer [], for , , Hancock Co., IL, 30 Jan. 1843; handwriting of ; signature of JS; one page; JS Collection, CHL. Includes notation.
Single leaf, measuring 3½ × 7⅝ inches (9 × 19 cm). The leaf is made of blue paper and is ruled with eight horizontal lines printed in blue ink with header space. It was hand cut along the bottom edge. Sometime after the document was inscribed, added a notation. The document was folded in half twice for filing.
The document was presumably kept among treasury records in the Nauvoo city records. In 1845 the city of was disincorporated. Many if not most of the city records were likely included in the various collections of city records listed in an inventory produced by the Church Historian’s Office (later Church Historical Department) in 1846, when they were packed up along with church records and taken to the Salt Lake Valley. The city records are also listed in inventories of church records created in 1855, 1878, and circa 1904. By 1973 the document had been included in the JS Collection at the Church Historical Department (now CHL). The document’s likely inclusion with the city records as well as its inclusion in the early church inventories and in the JS Collection by 1973 indicate continuous institutional custody.
“An Act to Repeal the Nauvoo Charter,” 14th General Assembly, 1844–1845, Senate Bill no. 35 (House Bill no. 42), Illinois General Assembly, Enrolled Acts of the General Assembly, 1818–2012, Illinois State Archives, Springfield.
Illinois General Assembly. Bills, Resolutions, and Related General Assembly Records, 1st–98th Bienniums, 1819–2015. Illinois State Archives, Springfield.
“Inventory. Historian’s Office. 4th April 1855,” [1]–[2]; “Index of Records and Journals in the Historian’s Office 1878,” [11]; “Index to Papers in the Historians Office,” ca. 1904, 7, Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL.
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection, 1827–1844, in the CHL catalog.
Historical Introduction
On 30 January 1843, JS signed a pay order as mayor of , Illinois, directing the city treasurer to pay $34.50 to for his services as city recorder. A new city ordinance, passed on 14 January 1843, stipulated that the recorder would receive $100 per year for his services as secretary of the city council and that the recorder might receive 12½ cents for every 72 words of city records and ordinances he copied, 50 cents for each marriage he recorded, and 50 cents for every document to which he affixed the corporate seal and for which he created a certificate. Two weeks later, during a 30 January 1843 meeting, the city council directed that eighteen individuals, including Sloan, be paid “for their services in the City Council.” Although Sloan signed the pay orders for seventeen individuals, JS signed this particular order.
On 30 January 1843, wrote the pay order on a loose sheet, which JS subsequently signed. On 22 February 1843, , the city treasurer, entered a record of the pay order in the city treasury ledger. Neither the pay order nor the treasury ledger indicates when Sloan received the payment, but he presumably received it on or shortly after 22 February 1843, when Clayton recorded the order.