Haun's Mill massacre
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The Haun's Mill massacre was an important event in the history of the Latter Day Saint movement. It occurred on October 30, 1838 when a renegade militia unit from Livingston County attacked a Mormon settlement in eastern Caldwell County, Missouri. By far the bloodiest skirmish in the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, the events have been long remembered by the Latter Day Saints.
Some 30-40 families were encamped at the settlement, which was centered around a mill owned and operated by early Latter Day Saint settler, Jacob Haun. The renegade militia was led by Colonel Thomas Jennings and included some 250 men. Jennings negotiated a truce with Mormon leaders at the settlement on October 28, but broke the truce a mere two days later. Alerted to the militia's approach, most of the Latter Day Saint women and children fled into the woods to the south —while most of the men stayed behind to fight, entrenching themselves in the blacksmith shop. Tragically, the building was a particularly vulnerable entrenchment as the widely-spaced logs made it easy for the militiamen to fire inside. The shop became a deathtrap, as the Missourians gave no quarter.
By the end of the skirmish, seventeen Mormons were dead, including a man of seventy-eight and a boy of ten (who was shot at close range to the head), and thirteen more had been injured including a woman and a seven year old boy. A non-Mormon ally was also killed. Three of the 250 Missourians were wounded, but none fatally. After the fighting, the dead were buried together in an unfinished well, and the remaining Mormons and their wounded gathered to Far West for protection.
Although the massacre took place a few days after Missouri's governor, Lilburn Boggs, issued his infamous Extermination Order, most historians have now concluded that the militia unit had gone renegade and had neither the time nor the opportunity to have received news of the order. None of the Missourians were ever brought to trial for their part in the massacre, and the Latter Day Saints efforts at receiving justice in the Missouri courts were in vain. Several of the Mormon participants in the Mountain Meadows Massacre cited vengeance for the injustice of Haun's Mill as key among their motives.
Today, the grounds of the massacre are maintained as a historic site by the Community of Christ church. The church is also conducting ongoing archaeological research to identify the former buildings and grounds of the Haun's Mill settlement.
This event was dramatized in the Latter-day Saint film Legacy.
