Petition from Orson Spencer and Others, circa 12 May 1843
Source Note
, , , , , R. B. Stewart, , , , Warren Smith, , G. W. Johnson, Caleb W. Lyons, and Josiah W. Fleming, Petition, , Hancock Co., IL, to Nauvoo City Council, ca. 12 May 1843; handwriting of ; signatures of petitioners; endorsement and docket in handwriting of ; one page; Nauvoo, IL, Records, 1841–1845, CHL.
Page [1]
To The Honorable City Council of the City of .
The Undersigned Citizens of would respectfully call the attention of your body to the evil, of suffering swine to run on the public common. The evil is believed to be serious to very many poor families who are looking with much solicitude & care to their Gardens to supply them with comforts & necessaries. Your Honorable Body will consider that though swine might have run loose in former times yet matters are much reversed now. Then the Devil run the swine into the sea & the owners were displeased but now he runs them into our Gardens & causes widows & our wives in our absence to rise by night to drive them out & the hog owners are better satisfied because they eat the fat thereof. Now if we must watch, the hogs believe it also scriptural to pray also that if we must have our the necessaries & comforts of life pillaged from us, we prefer that it should be done by the hog owners rather than the hogs because we think it more honorable to feed men than swine and more becomeing the owners to do their own stealing than to let loose upon the unprotected the Devils Tabernacles