Porter Rockwell - Biography

Biography

Orrin Porter Rockwell was born on June 28, 1813 in Belchertown, Hampshire County, Massachusetts to Orin and Sarah Rockwell. He was baptized into the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ontario County, New York in 1830. He married Luana Beebe on February 2, 1832 in Jackson County, Missouri, and was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on January 5, 1846. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as a loyal personal bodyguard to both Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young. Separating fact from legends, folklore and myths concerning Rockwell is difficult for historians, in large part because Rockwell was only semi-literate and kept no personal diary.

He had the distinction of being the subject of a direct prophecy by Joseph Smith. After spending eight months in jail on charges of attempting to assassinate former Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs, a filthy and emaciated Rockwell traveled to Nauvoo, where he appeared unannounced at a Christmas party at Joseph Smith's home. When his identity was confirmed, Smith was moved to say, "I prophesy, in the name of the Lord, that you — Orrin Porter Rockwell — so long as ye shall remain loyal and true to thy faith, need fear no enemy. Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee.". The promise echoes that given by an angel to the parents of the Biblical Samson.

Rockwell was a character of contrasts. On one hand he was said to be generous to a fault, even to strangers. For example, upon hearing of a widow who was balding from typhoid fever, he gave up his famous long hair to make the woman a wig. (The recipient of the hair was Agnes Coolbrith Smith Pickett, widow of Joseph Smith's brother Don Carlos, and mother of Ina Coolbrith, who grew up to be Poet Laureate of California.)

On the other hand, he was reputed to have killed many men as a gunfighter, as a religious enforcer, and Deputy United States Marshal. It is said that Porter once told a crowd listening to United States Vice President Schuyler Colfax in 1869, "I never killed anyone who didn't need killing".

Porter Rockwell was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent."

Rockwell was accused of attempting the assassination of Lilburn Boggs, the former governor of Missouri, who signed Executive Order 44 on October 27, 1838 known as the "Extermination Order" evicting Mormons from Missouri by violent and deadly means. The order was governor's response to the 1838 Mormon War and to what Boggs termed "open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this State... 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." The order was not formally rescinded until 1976.

A grand jury was unable to find sufficient evidence to indict him, convinced in part by his reputation as a deadly gunman and his statement that he "never shot at anybody, if I shoot they get shot!... He's still alive, ain't he?" Rockwell denied involvement in oblique terms, stating that he had "done nothing criminal". Some Mormons saw the assassination attempt positively: An anonymous contributor to The Wasp, a pro-Mormon newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois, wrote on May 28 that "Boggs is undoubtedly killed according to report; but who did the noble deed remains to be found out."

Also at about this time, John C. Bennett, a disaffected Mormon, reported that Smith had offered a cash reward to anyone who would assassinate Boggs, and that Smith had admitted to him that Rockwell had done the deed. He went on to say that Rockwell had made a veiled threat against Bennett's life if he publicized the story. Joseph Smith vehemently denied Bennett's account, speculating that Boggs — no longer governor, but campaigning for state senate — was attacked by an election opponent. 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.

Rockwell was reportedly a leader together with Ephe Hanks and Bill Hickman of the Danites, a Mormon vigilante group sworn to exact blood vengeance. Stewart Durham writes, "The most notorious Danite was Ephe Hanks, who went against Joseph Smith's wishes and started the Danites, on his own."

It was Porter's fame as a "mountain man" that attracted the explorer Richard Francis Burton to him. In 1860, on his trip across America to the west coast, Burton stopped to explore Salt Lake City and its environs. He stayed with Bishop Lysander Dayton (from Ohio) in a village near the city one evening and Dayton invited Porter Rockwell to dinner. Porter sent for a bottle of Valley Tan Whiskey and he and Burton drank shot for shot into the night with Porter outlining steps that Burton should take for safety during his passage to Sacramento. Porter advised Burton to carry a loaded double-barreled shotgun, sleep in a "dark camp" (unlit, miles from where supper was cooked), to never trust appearances, and to avoid the main trail, where "White Indians" (so-called because they were white robbers who disguised themselves as Indians to pass off blame) preyed on travelers.

Rockwell died in Salt Lake City, Utah of natural causes on June 9, 1878. He was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.