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In Utah, Uncle Orrin Porter Rockwell ran a tavern and raised horses, near what’s called The Point of the Mountain, at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. He served as a frontier lawman, as a diplomatic envoy from Uncle Brigham Young to the Indians, and, we must admit, became a notorious Wild West gunslinger. He was accused1 of every murder committed in his general vicinity, including a famous attempt on the life of Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri. When asked, he would say either “Wheat, wheat,” or, at least once, “I never killed anybody who didn’t need it.”

Aunt Mary Ann gave him six children and then died in 1866. Port then married the housekeeper, Christine Olsen, who seems to have destroyed all the pictures of Mary Ann that she could find. The painting on the previous page seems to be the only likeness to escape Christine’s jealousy.

Nineteenth-century gunslingers and scouts seldom lived to see their forties. Porter had four children with Christine, dying of heart failure at age 65, four months before the birth of his fourteenth child. His tombstone in the Salt Lake City Cemetery says,

“He was brave & loyal to his faith True to the prophet Jos. Smith,
a promise made him by the prophet thru obedience it was fulfilled.”



1Much garbage has been written about Uncle Porter, during his lifetime and since. He never made any effort to counter it, but then he never learned to read or write. His most serious biography in print is Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God Son of Thunder, by Harold Schindler. I’ll let you know, if I encounter anything else worth your time.

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