page_title: Caldwell County, Missouri
section_title: Mormon settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Caldwell County, Missouri / History / Mormon settlement
caption_attribution_description: English: Monument in Far West, Missouri. Esperanto: Monumento en Far West, Misuri.
context_page_description: Caldwell County is a county located in Missouri, United States. As of the 2010 census, the county's population was 9,424. It is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Its county seat is Kingston. The county was organized December 29, 1836 and named by Alexander Doniphan to honor John Caldwell, who participated in George Rogers Clark's Native American Campaign of 1786 and was the second Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky.
  Caldwell County was originally established as a haven for Mormons, who had been driven from Jackson County in November 1833 and had been refugees in adjacent Clay County since. The county was one of the principal settings of the 1838 Missouri Mormon War, which led to the expulsion of all Latter Day Saints from Missouri, following the issuance of an "extermination order" by then–Governor Lilburn Boggs.
context_section_description: Caldwell County was originally part of Ray County. The first white settler was Jesse Mann, Sr., who settled one-half mile northeast of the public square of Kingston on Shoal Creek in 1831. The early settlers moved back south in 1832 for better protection during the Black Hawk War uprising.
  A few Mormon settlers, who had been evicted from Jackson County, Missouri, moved into the county in 1832, and included Jacob Haun, whose mill on Shoal Creek would become the scene of the bloodiest incident in the Mormon War, known as the Haun's Mill Massacre.
  The settlers established Salem, the first town in the county, two miles southeast of Kingston. A larger number of Mormons moved to the county in the fall of 1836. The Missouri General Assembly created Caldwell County in December 1836, with the understanding that it would be dedicated to Mormon settlers. Its county seat was Far West, Missouri. By 1838 Far West reported a population of 4,000.
  The major figures of early Mormon history, including Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Edward Partridge, Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt and John D. Lee, were included in the migration.
caption: Monument at the temple site in Far West, Missouri.
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