Source Information

Ancestry.com. LDS Redress Petition Listing, 1843 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
Original data: Platt, Lyman. Listing of Latter-day Saints Who Petitioned Congress, 1843

About LDS Redress Petition Listing, 1843

The Judiciary Committee of the Twenty-eighth Congress of the United States received a petition in 1843 to redress the "injuries to persons and properties" of Mormons expelled from Missouri in the 1830s. This database is a listing of residents of Hancock County, Illinois who signed that petition. Compiled by respected family historian Lyman Platt, each record reveals the signatory's name, ward of residence in Nauvoo, and page in the original petition on which their name appears. The original document numbered fifty-nine pages and contained 3400 signatures. For researchers seeking information regarding early LDS ancestors, this can be a helpful database.

Sometimes family member signed the petition sequentially, sometimes not. At times the wife would sign in the doubled-column pages, in the right-hand column, opposite her husband. There are indications that some members of the LDS Church living in Nauvoo at the time did not sign the petition. There is evidence that some adult members of families signed while others did not.

It is the conclusion of some researchers that a number of the individuals whose signatures are included in the petition, were never in Missouri, but they signed it in support of their friends and neighbors, and family members who were.

The petition is not divided into any apparent sub-divisions, but based on other studies of Nauvoo and surroundings areas, there is strong evidence that is was taken somewhat similar to the 1842 census of Nauvoo, and is divided as follows:

Nauvoo 4th civil ward, pages 3-8

Nauvoo 3rd civil ward, pages 9-25

Nauvoo 1st civil ward, pages 26-30

Nauvoo 2nd civil ward, pages 31-36

Outlying areas around Nauvoo, probably including Warsaw, pages 37-44

Ramus, pages 45-49

Lima, pages 50-56+