Your petitioner William Dryden an acting Justice of the peace within and for would respectfully represent. that the Counties of and are settled by in part a denomination of people called Mormons. These Mormons to the number of about fifteen hundred men have associated themselves together, and have resisted and do resist with force and arms legal process against persons belonging to their denomination. Your petitioner further states that on the 29th day of August last past, appeared before me and made oath, that , and others, had been guilty of a [1 line illegible] follows, to wit, that on or about the 8th day of August 1838 in , there came an armed force to his s house in said among whom the said and and others persons named in said affidavit were a part, and then and there with deadly weapons made an assault upon him the said , and then and there threatened him (who was then an acting Justice of the peace within and for [p. [1]]