Interesting Facts about Porter
- Orrin Porter Rockwell was born June 28, 1813 in Belchertown, Hampshire County, Massachusetts to Orin and Sarah Rockwell. Died June 9, 1878 of natural causes in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, United States. Buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery.
- Three wives, but never a polygamist. Luana Hart Beebe (divorced), Mary Ann Neff (died, one month after childbirth) and Christina Olsen (was the nanny brought in after Mary Ann died, married her later) produced 15 kids total, the last one born 5 months after his death.
- His epitaph reads, “He was brave and loyal to his faith. True to the Prophet Jos. Smith. A promise made him by the prophet. Through obedience it was fulfilled.”
- “But he (Porter Rockwell) was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of a 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.” Ludlow, Fitz Hugh (1870), The Heart of the Continent: a record of travel across the plains and in Oregon, with an examination of the Mormon principle, New York: Hurd & Houghton, p. 355.
- He is reputed to have killed many men as a gunfighter, as religious enforcer, and Deputy United States Marshal. It is said that Rockwell once told a crowd listening to United Sates Vice President Schuyler Colfax in 1869, “I never killed anyone who didn't need killing”.
- Two statues of Rockwell exist. One near the old site of his Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery near the Utah State Penitentiary and the other in Lehi, UT off of Main Street behind the “Porter's Place” restaurant which exists to celebrate his memory.
- Rockwell operated the Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery at the southern end of the Salt Lake Valley, in an area known as “Point of the Mountain.”
- Rockwell aka: The Avenging Angel, The modern day Samson, Chief of the Danites, James Brown (alias)