20 Facts About Lilburn Boggs

Lilburn Williams Boggs was the sixth Governor of Missouri, from 1836 to 1840.

Lilburn Boggs is most widely remembered for his interactions with Joseph Smith and Porter Rockwell, and Missouri Executive Order 44, known by Mormons as the "Extermination Order", issued in response to the ongoing conflict between church members and other settlers of Missouri.

Lilburn Boggs served for 18 months with the Kentucky troops during the War of 1812.

Lilburn Boggs moved in 1816 from Lexington, Kentucky, to Missouri, which was then part of the Louisiana Territory.

Lilburn Boggs was a member of the Smithton Company that would establish the Town of Smithton that would later grow into Columbia, Missouri.

In Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1817, Lilburn Boggs married his first wife, Julia Ann Bent, a sister of the Bent brothers of Bent's Fort fame, and daughter of Silas Bent, then a judge in the Missouri Supreme Court.

Lilburn Boggs died on September 21,1820, in St Louis, Missouri.

In 1823, Lilburn Boggs married Panthea Grant Boone, a granddaughter of Daniel Boone, in Callaway County, Missouri.

Lilburn Boggs served as a Missouri state senator from 1825 to 1832; as lieutenant governor from 1832 to 1836; governor from 1836 to 1840; and again as state senator from 1842 to 1846.

Lilburn Boggs, who was from Independence, moved to a house within the City of Zion plot in Independence after the Mormons were evicted from Missouri and after he left office.

Lilburn Boggs's home was three blocks east of Temple Lot.

Lilburn Boggs was hit by large buckshot in four places: two balls were lodged in his skull, another lodged in his neck, and a fourth entered his throat, whereupon Lilburn Boggs swallowed it.

Lilburn Boggs went on to say that Rockwell had made a veiled threat against Bennett's life if he publicized the story.

Mormon writer Monte B McLaws, in the Missouri Historical Review, supported Smith, averring that while there was no clear finger pointing to anyone, Governor Boggs was running for election against several violent men, all capable of the deed, and that there was no particular reason to suspect Rockwell of the crime.

Lilburn Boggs traveled overland to California in 1846 and is frequently mentioned among the notable emigrants of that year.

Lilburn Boggs's traveling companions widely believed that his move was rooted in his fear of the Mormons.

Lilburn Boggs was accompanied by his second wife, Panthea, and his younger children as well as his son, William, and William's bride, Sonora Hicklin.

Lilburn Boggs became alcalde of the Sonoma district in 1847.

On November 8,1849, Lilburn Boggs resigned as alcalde and became the town's postmaster.

Lilburn Boggs was elected to the California State Assembly from the Sonoma District in 1852.