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Promissory Note to John Brassfield, 16 April 1839

Source Note

[JS], Promissory Note, , to , 16 Apr. 1839; handwriting of and JS; probable signature of JS (now missing); one page; JS Collection, CHL.
Single leaf measuring 4 × 7½ inches (10 × 19 cm). The left and top edges have the square cut of manufactured paper. The right and bottom edges are unevenly torn. The document was folded for carrying and filing. The bottom right portion, where one or more signatures would have appeared, was subsequently torn off. A portion of the first letter of a signature remains, possibly a “J”. The promissory note was likely in the possession of until it was redeemed, whereupon it passed into possession of the LDS church.

Historical Introduction

On 16 April 1839, a promissory note was made for , one of the men guarding JS and his fellow prisoners in . Textual and historical evidence indicate that JS and one or more of his companions issued this note, promising to pay Brassfield $150. Around six days earlier in , Missouri, JS and his fellow prisoners were indicted by a grand jury for crimes they allegedly committed during the conflict between and other Missourians in 1838. Following the indictments, presiding judge granted the prisoners a change of venue from to Columbia, Boone County, Missouri, on the grounds that Burch had served as the prosecuting attorney during the November 1838 preliminary hearing.
sheriff William Morgan was tasked with transporting JS, , , , and from to Columbia, a journey of approximately 150 miles. Morgan selected four guards—, Wilson McKinney, , and John Pogue—to assist him. wrote in his journal that the guards were “verry lenient and kind.” On 12 April 1839, the group left Gallatin for , seven miles away, where they stayed two nights at Bowman’s home, presumably to prepare for the remainder of the journey. They then traveled another seven miles to and spent the night of 14 April at the residence of . On 15 April, the party continued the journey, staying the night at the home of a “Mr. Cox.” The next day, the group progressed another nineteen miles toward and camped by a stream that called Yellow Creek. That night, the prisoners escaped.
On 16 April 1839—the last day of travel with the guards—, who wrote letters on behalf of JS and the other prisoners while in the , wrote a promissory note for a financial transaction between one of the prisoners—presumably JS—and . Sometime after McRae wrote the note, JS changed the wording of the note from “I” to “we,” suggesting that the prisoner who originated the note was joined in the transaction by at least one other prisoner. These individuals agreed to pay Brassfield $150 for an undisclosed “value receive[d]”—the standard phrase used in promissory notes to indicate goods or services obtained. Comparable promissory notes usually set the due date as weeks or months after the date the note was issued, allowing time for the maker of the note to acquire the money needed to pay the note. In contrast, the note for Brassfield matured “one day after date,” meaning he could redeem the note as early as 17 April.
The nature of the $150 “value receive[d]” is unclear; contemporary documents indicate multiple possibilities. later stated that the guards sold the prisoners two horses in exchange for a promissory note and some of the prisoners’ extra clothing. The men may have considered $150 a fair price for a horse, as that was the value of a horse JS owned in northwestern in 1838, and the note may have been for one of the two horses purchased. It is also possible that the “value receive[d]” represented payment for facilitating the escape: on 16 April the party stopped for the night at an isolated location, and the guards reportedly became intoxicated and fell asleep—possibly on purpose. noted cryptically in his journal that the group intended “to stay all knight but did not stay all knight”; instead, the prisoners “left them”—presumably referring to the guards. Rumors quickly circulated that the prisoners bribed the guards to allow the escape. An 1843 note in JS’s journal states that “helped Joseph to escape from the missourians.” Also in 1843, Hyrum Smith recounted that Sheriff Morgan was informed by “never to carry us [the prisoners] to ,” suggesting that some officials were complicit in the escape.
It also remains unclear when the promissory note was paid. may have visited the Saints in in mid-1839 to redeem the note. On 4 June 1839, recorded in his account book a $150 debit for JS for “cash p[ai]d Brass Field”; however, it is not certain what this entry referred to. If it did not refer to John Brassfield and the featured promissory note, Brassfield may have redeemed the note on 28 February 1843, when he visited JS in , Illinois, and apparently stayed the night at JS’s residence. JS’s son , who was ten years old at the time of Brassfield’s visit, later recalled that the man came “for the purpose of collecting the amount of the bribe for which they [the guards] had allowed the prisoners to escape.” Joseph Smith III remembered the amount being $800. He also recalled that his father gave Brassfield a “cream-colored or ‘clay-bank’ horse” to replace one used during the flight from . At whatever time the note was paid, it was evidently returned to JS. As was customary, it was probably at this point that the note was canceled by tearing off the signature(s) to preclude the possibility of the note being redeemed again. Because the signature area of the note was torn off, it is unclear how many of the prisoners signed the note.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    JS was indicted for riot, treason, larceny, receipt of stolen goods, and two incidents of arson.a The riot indictment stemmed from an 8 August 1838 confrontation at the home of Adam Black, a Daviess County justice of the peace whom church members accused of leading a mob against the Latter-day Saints.b The remaining indictments were for alleged crimes committed during the October 1838 Daviess County expedition, which the Latter-day Saints launched in the wake of church members’ expulsion from Carroll County, Missouri. The two arson indictments stemmed from fires in Gallatin and Millport, Missouri, both of which the Saints suspected were anti-Mormon vigilante havens.c

    (aDaviess Co., MO, Circuit Court Record, Apr. 1839, bk. A, 57–58, Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO; Robert Wilson, Gallatin, MO, to James L. Minor, Jefferson City, MO, 18 Mar. 1841, in Document Containing the Correspondence, 156–159. bSee Affidavit, 5 Sept. 1838; Recognizance, 7 Sept. 1838; and Indictment, [Honey Creek Township, MO], [ca. 10] Apr. 1839, State of Missouri v. JS et al. for Riot [Daviess Co. Cir. Ct. 1839], Historical Department, Nineteenth-Century Legal Documents Collection, CHL. cIndictment, [Honey Creek Township, MO], [ca. 10] Apr. 1839, State of Missouri v. Baldwin et al. for Arson [Daviess Co. Cir. Ct. 1839], Historical Department, Nineteenth-Century Legal Documents Collection, CHL; Indictment, [Honey Creek Township, MO], [ca. 10] Apr. 1839, State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Arson [Daviess Co. Cir. Ct. 1839], microfilm 959,084, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.)

    Daviess County, Missouri. Circuit Court Record, vol. A, July 1837–Oct. 1843. Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO.

    Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c., in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons; and the Evidence Given before the Hon. Austin A. King, Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit of the State of Missouri, at the Court-House in Richmond, in a Criminal Court of Inquiry, Begun November 12, 1838, on the Trial of Joseph Smith, Jr., and Others, for High Treason and Other Crimes against the State. Fayette, MO: Boon’s Lick Democrat, 1841.

  2. [2]

    Daviess Co., MO, Circuit Court Record, Apr. 1839, bk. A, 67–70, Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO. The prisoners began seeking a change of venue as early as January 1839. On 24 January, the prisoners argued in a memorial to the Missouri legislature that they could not receive a fair trial within the fifth judicial circuit. Their petition led to a revised Missouri statute that permitted changes of venue between circuits. However, the prisoners ultimately received a change of venue on different grounds. In late January 1839, the Missouri legislature reorganized the state’s second and fifth judicial circuits, moving Daviess County from the fifth circuit to the newly created eleventh circuit, with Burch as the circuit’s judge. Missouri law mandated a change of venue “to the circuit court of some county in a different circuit” when the judge previously served as counsel in the case. (Historical Introduction to Memorial to the Missouri Legislature, 24 Jan. 1839; An Act to Establish a Judicial Circuit out of the Second and Fifth Judicial Circuits [31 Jan. 1839], Laws of the State of Missouri [1839], p. 34, sec. 3; Bay, Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri, 487; An Act to Regulate Proceedings in Criminal Cases [21 Mar. 1835], Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri [1835], p. 486, art. 5, sec. 15.)

    Daviess County, Missouri. Circuit Court Record, vol. A, July 1837–Oct. 1843. Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO.

    Laws of the State of Missouri, Passed at the First Session of the Tenth General Assembly, Begun and Held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Nineteenth Day of November, in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Eight. Jefferson, MO: Calvin Gunn, 1838.

    Bay, W. V. N. Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri. . . . St. Louis: F. H. Thomas, 1878.

    The Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri, Revised and Digested by the Eighth General Assembly, During the Years One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Four, and One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Five. Together with the Constitutions of Missouri and of the United States. 3rd ed. St. Louis: Chambers and Knapp, 1841.

  3. [3]

    Execution of Order, 6 July 1839, State of Missouri v. JS et al. for Larceny [Daviess Co. Cir. Ct. 1839], Daviess Co., MO, Circuit Court Records, 1839, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia. Starting in summer 1837, Bowman and Brassfield participated in anti-Mormon efforts to expel the Latter-day Saints from Daviess County. (Adam Black, Certificate, 27 July 1838, copy; William Bowman, Certificate, no date, copy; John Brassfield, Certificate, no date, copy, Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives, Washington DC.)

    Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives / Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Judiciary during the 27th Congress. Committee on the Judiciary, Petitions and Memorials, 1813–1968. Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC. The LDS records cited herein are housed in National Archives boxes 40 and 41 of Library of Congress boxes 139–144 in HR27A-G10.1.

  4. [4]

    Hyrum Smith, Diary, 14 Apr. 1839.

    Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.

  5. [5]

    Bowman was living in the home that Lyman Wight built and previously owned. The travelers left a day behind schedule because of rain. (Hyrum Smith, Diary, 12–14 Apr. 1839.)

    Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.

  6. [6]

    The exact location of the campsite is unknown, but it may have been in Chariton County or Linn County. (Hyrum Smith, Diary, 14–16 Apr. 1839; Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 32, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; Baugh, “We Took Our Change of Venue,” 66, 79n39.)

    Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

    Baugh, Alexander L. “‘We Took Our Change of Venue to the State of Illinois’: The Gallatin Hearing and the Escape of Joseph Smith and the Mormon Prisoners from Missouri, April 1839.” Mormon Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): 59–82.

  7. [7]

    Chitty, Practical Treatise on Bills of Exchange, 17–23; see also Promissory Note to Jason Brunell, 14 Sept. 1837; and Promissory Note to Jonathan Burgess, 17 Aug. 1836.

    Chitty, Joseph. A Practical Treatise on Bills of Exchange, Checks on Bankers, Promissory Notes, Bankers’ Cash Notes, and Bank Notes. 6th American ed. Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I. Lea, 1826.

  8. [8]

    Hyrum Smith, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, pp. 25–26, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 32, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; see also Rogers, Statement, [2], CHL.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

    Rogers, David W. Statement, [not before 1846]. CHL.

  9. [9]

    Hyrum Smith, Deposition, Nauvoo, IL, 22 Apr. 1842; Elias Higbee, Deposition, Nauvoo, IL, 22 Apr. 1842; Lyman Wight, Deposition, Nauvoo, IL, 22 Apr. 1842, JS v. George M. Hinkle [Lee Co. Dist. Ct. 1842], CHL; see also Statement of Account from John Howden, 29 Mar. 1838.

    JS v. George M. Hinkle / Lee County, Iowa Territory, District Court. Joseph Smith v. George M. Hinkle, 1841–1842. CHL.

  10. [10]

    Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 32, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; Baugh, “We Took Our Change of Venue,” 66, 79n39.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

    Baugh, Alexander L. “‘We Took Our Change of Venue to the State of Illinois’: The Gallatin Hearing and the Escape of Joseph Smith and the Mormon Prisoners from Missouri, April 1839.” Mormon Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): 59–82.

  11. [11]

    Bill of Damages, 4 June 1839; Hyrum Smith, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, pp. 25–26, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

  12. [12]

    Hyrum Smith, Diary, 16 Apr. 1839; Hyrum Smith, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 26; Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 32, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL. Avoiding main roads and constrained by the necessity of sharing two horses among five men, JS and his fellow escapees arrived in Quincy, Illinois, on 22 April 1839. (Hyrum Smith, Diary, 16–19 Apr. 1839; JS, Journal, 16 and 22–23 Apr. 1839.)

    Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

  13. [13]

    William W. Phelps, Far West, MO, to Sally Waterman Phelps, St. Louis, 1 May 1839, CHL; see also Kimball, “History,” 101–102. Church member David W. Rogers recalled that he encountered Brassfield within days of the prisoners’ escape and that Brassfield related to Rogers “the particulars of their escape, and how they stole two of his Horses.” One of Brassfield’s companions stated, perhaps referring to the promissory note, that the prisoners “would have stolen more if they had have had more money.” (Rogers, Statement, [2]–[3], CHL.)

    Phelps, William W. Letter, Far West, MO, to Sally Waterman Phelps, St. Louis, MO, 1 May 1839. CHL.

    Kimball, Heber C. “History of Heber Chase Kimball by His Own Dictation,” ca. 1842–1856. Heber C. Kimball, Papers, 1837–1866. CHL. MS 627, box 2.

    Rogers, David W. Statement, [not before 1846]. CHL.

  14. [14]

    JS, Journal, 28 Feb. 1843.

  15. [15]

    Hyrum Smith, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 26; Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 32, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; see also Stevens, Centennial History of Missouri, 2:119.

    Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.

    Stevens, Walter B. Centennial History of Missouri (the Center State): One Hundred Years in the Union, 1820–1921. 5 vols. St. Louis: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1921.

  16. [16]

    Apostle Heber C. Kimball recalled that in late April 1839, shortly after the prisoners’ escape and while Kimball was still in Missouri, an unidentified man “presented an order drawn on me by Joseph Smith for $50000. saying it was for horses furnished him.” If the unidentified man was Brassfield, as the reference to furnishing horses may suggest, Kimball misremembered the financial instrument—calling it an order rather than a note—and he misremembered the amount of the note presented to him. It is possible that multiple promissory notes were made on or shortly before 16 April 1839, only one of which has been located. (Kimball, “History,” 102.)

    Kimball, Heber C. “History of Heber Chase Kimball by His Own Dictation,” ca. 1842–1856. Heber C. Kimball, Papers, 1837–1866. CHL. MS 627, box 2.

  17. [17]

    In addition, on 1 July 1839, Knight noted twenty dollars in “cash hold to pay Brassfield.” (Knight, Account Book, 1, 3.)

    Knight, Vinson. Account Book, 1839–1842. Microfilm. CHL.

  18. [18]

    JS, Journal, 28 Feb. 1843.

  19. [19]

    “The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith,” Saints’ Herald, 13 Nov. 1934, 1454.

    Saints’ Herald. Independence, MO. 1860–.

  20. [20]

    Cancellation voided the promissory note, indicating that it had been paid in full. (“Cancellation,” in Bouvier, Law Dictionary, 1:151; Chitty, Practical Treatise on Bills of Exchange, 214.)

    Bouvier, John. A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America, and of the Several States of the American Union; with References to the Civil and Other Systems of Foreign Law. 2 vols. Philadelphia: T. and J. W. Johnson, 1839.

    Chitty, Joseph. A Practical Treatise on Bills of Exchange, Checks on Bankers, Promissory Notes, Bankers’ Cash Notes, and Bank Notes. 6th American ed. Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I. Lea, 1826.

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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Promissory Note to John Brassfield, 16 April 1839
ID #
440
Total Pages
2
Print Volume Location
JSP, D6:422–426
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