The Haun’s Mill Massacre (also Hawn’s Mill Massacre) occurred on October 30, 1838, when a mob/militia unit from Livingston County, Missouri, attacked a Mormon settlement in eastern Caldwell County, Missouri, after the Battle of Crooked River. By far the bloodiest event in the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, it has long been remembered by the members of the Latter Day Saint movement. While the spelling "Haun" is common when referring to the massacre or the mill where it occurred, the mill's owner used the spelling "Hawn" in legal documents. Hawn's Mill Hawn's Mill was a mill established on the banks of Shoal Creek in Fairview Township, Caldwell County, Missouri in 1835–1836 by Jacob Hawn. Hawn was the son of German emigrants to Canada, who resettled in New York, where Jacob was born. While Jacob moved to Missouri and founded the mill around the same time as the Mormon migration to Missouri, he was not a Mormon. However, by October 1838 there were approximately 75 Mormon families living along the banks of Shoal Creek, about 30 of them in the immediate vicinity of Hawn's Mill and the James Houston blacksmith shop. Missouri militia The unauthorized militia involved in the massacre was led overall by Colonel Thomas Jennings, of Livingston County with William O. Jennings (Sheriff of Livingston County), Nehemiah Comstock, and William Gee as captains of the three companies. At the time of the attack, the militia consisted of 240 men from Daviess, Livingston, Ray, Carroll and Chariton counties, as well as prominent men like Major Daniel Ashby of the Missouri state legislature and Thomas R. Bryan, Clerk of Livingston County. Although the massacre took place a few days after Missouri's governor, Lilburn Boggs, issued his infamous Missouri Executive Order 44 ("Extermination Order" of 1838) there is debate if the participants in the massacre knew of it. Hyrum Smith reported in the church's archives that Captain Comstock, who previously had assured the Mormons at the mill of their safety, had returned the next day attacking them, saying he had received an order from Governor Boggs via Colonel Ashley. However, historian William G. Hartley opined the local militia likely had not yet received news of this specific executive order, but rather the militia responded to the open hostility to Mormons that was already prevalent in Missouri, even before the order was published. Militia member and state legislator Major Daniel Ashby stated in