Medium-size blank book. The paper, which is ruled with light blue lines (now faded) measures 7½ × 6⅛ inches (19 × 16 cm). The book consists of seven gatherings of between eleven and thirteen leaves each. The book has a brown leather binding; the bound volume measures 7¾ × 6¼ × ½ inches (20 × 16 × 1 cm). The outside covers are adorned with shell marbled paper, with a blue and tan body and veins of brown and yellow. The front and back covers of the volume are pasteboard. “Oliver Cowdery’s Sketch Book January 1836” was written across the front cover in black ink (now faded), and “SKETCH BOOK No 1” was written vertically in black ink on the back cover. The volume contains two flyleaves in both the front and back of the volume. The final flyleaf was ruled by hand and includes instructions for a stucco whitewash.

A Church Historian’s Office label containing an early call number and a brief description of the book’s contents is pasted on the inside front cover of the volume. The first three leaves were left blank and are followed by a short title page that reads “Oliver Cowdery’s Sketch Book, January 1, 1836”. Following the title page, the inscribed pages are numbered 1–88. ’s diary entries are found on pages 1–22. On pages 22–30, recorded fair copies of the Nauvoo high council minutes. Beginning partway down page 30, Hosea Stout took over for Sherwood, continuing to record fair copies of the high council minutes through page 88.

As the original custodian of the book, used it as a diary between 1 January and 27 March 1836. Although the circumstances are unknown, at some point the volume was transmitted to , likely between April 1836 and October 1839. When Sherwood began making copies of high council minutes, he drew upon loose copies of the minutes he had taken while acting as clerk of the high council, a position he held from 20 October 1839 through 19 January 1840. Sherwood may have begun copying the minutes into this book as early as 20 October 1839, the date of the high council’s first meeting. He then recorded the minutes for the high council meetings held between 20 October and 2 November 1839. On or before 9 October 1841, Sherwood transferred the volume to the custody of , who had succeeded Sherwood as clerk of the Nauvoo high council in February 1840. Similarly drawing upon earlier loose minutes, Stout copied into the book minutes for meetings between 1 December 1839 and 20 December 1840. Stout noted a gap existing in the minutes between 2 November and 1 December 1839, stating that the minutes for those meetings had evidently been lost prior to October 1841. Between 9 October 1841 and 14 February 1842, Stout copied minutes through 12 April 1840, providing the date of transcription for each set of minutes. After copying the minutes for 12 April 1840, however, Stout no longer included transcription dates. Evidence suggests that he continued to work on the volume throughout 1842, copying minutes of meetings through probably at least 5–6 September 1840. He likely finished copying the minutes, which run through 20 December 1840, during either 1842 or 1843 and then maintained custody of the book until at least 1845. On 29 January 1845, visited Stout “to learn something about the High Council records” that Stout had arranged, “as they were wanted for in writing the Church History.”

It is unclear whether transferred the record book to in 1845. Richards’s 1846 inventory of historical materials included the “Records of High Council 1–2, & Rough Book,” but it is unclear whether Stout’s book was included in that listing. Other inventories are similarly vague in their description of the high council records, and none includes ’s diary in its descriptions. Although Stout likely turned the volume over to Richards in 1845, the first Church Historian’s Office inventory to specify that the volume was in the office’s custody was one made in 1878 that lists “Nauvoo High Council Record 1836.”