Ogden (Utah). City Council Meeting business files - petitions, 1859-1888.

This series contains formal requests or "petitions" submitted to the council and brought up for consideration in a public meeting. Petitions came from a variety of sources, including individual citizens, citizen groups, businesses, and city officials. They may include requests for a myriad of actions from the council, such as opening or closing streets, addressing public nuisances, abatement of taxes, purchasing city property, or employment with the city. These petitions were a regular part of council business in the 19th and early 20th century, when most of the decisions about city business came before the council. Relatively few of the petitions presented in the early decades survived, but by the 1880s they were being filed pretty consistently. At some point the city recorder apparently gathered the older records and sorted them by type, stamping each document with a number as a way to organize and keep track of them. The number stamping is somewhat arbitrary for the early years, but eventually begins to reflect a more chronological order. Some of the petitions are undated and have been filed in order of the stamp number they were given, but may be out of order chronologically.