Bifolium measuring 10 × 8¼ inches (25 × 21 cm), with twenty-seven horizontal blue lines. The top of the recto of the first leaf has the remnants of three red adhesive wafers that were attached to an unknown document that is not extant. The verso of the second leaf was attached with two red adhesive wafers to the recto of the first leaf of the copy of the 13 June 1843 power of attorney issued by governor . The warrant and power of attorney were included in a packet with JS’s 30 June 1843 petition to the Nauvoo Municipal Court, and the combined packet was folded for filing. At some point in time, both the unidentified preceding document and the succeeding copy of the power of attorney were detached from the copy of the warrant. The warrant copy was subsequently reattached to the other documents in the packet using one or more pins, which were later removed.

Nauvoo Municipal Court clerk added a notation to the verso of the copy of the warrant’s first leaf and filed the featured copy of the warrant on 30 June 1843. The warrant was presumably kept among 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 Family and Church History 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. The Nauvoo, Illinois, records collection was arranged and cataloged by the Family and Church History Department (now CHL) in 2006. The warrant’s presumed inclusion with the city records listed in early church inventories and its inclusion in the Nauvoo, Illinois, records collection in 2006 indicate that the warrant has remained in continuous institutional custody since 1845.