The Restoration in Images

Thekiefhmm church prospered  in North Western Missouri for a brief period from 1836 to 1838.  Settlements were started in Far West and Adam Ondi Ahman.  In October of 1838, Governor Boggs of Missouri issued his executive order #44, or "extermination order" which ordered that "The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace -- Their outrages are beyond all description."

In what was probably an attempt to carry out that order, a mob-militia of 240 men entered the town of Haun's Mill and mercilessly shot at everyone in sight, including women  and children.  While discharging a gun to the head of 10 year old Saradius Smith, one mob  member exclaimed "Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon"

The extermination order was rescinded in June of 1976 by Governor Christopher Bond in celebration of the Bicentennial year and as a support of the exercise of religious freedom, one of the basic tenets of our free democratic republic.