(ILLINOIS) Minutes of the founding meeting of the Warsaw and

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(ILLINOIS.) Minutes of the founding meeting of the Warsaw and Rockford Railroad. Printed slip, 7 3/4 x 3 inches, signed in type by W.H. Roosevelt as chairman and A. Swartz as secretary; moderate wear. [Nauvoo or Warsaw, IL?], 28 September 1852

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This little oddity touches upon several diverse strands of Americana: the Roosevelt family, Mormons, railroads, and early Illinois printing. It presents the minutes of the organizing meeting for the Warsaw & Rockford Railroad in western Illinois, which considered "the expediency of making so much of the road as extends around the Rapids." It was described as "a meeting of the citizens of Nauvoo and vicinity held at the Mayor's office, in the city of Nauvoo." Nauvoo had been the center of the Mormon faith until just a few years previous, when the larger proportion of adherents had gone west to Utah. The chairman of the meeting was William Henry Roosevelt (1806-1869), a prominent attorney and land speculator in Warsaw. He was one of the first of the family to head to the West; his grand-nephew Theodore Roosevelt later became president. This slip does not appear in Byrd's Illinois Imprints, but was likely printed in Nauvoo or nearby Warsaw. OCLC traces only one other copy, at Brigham Young University.