Porter Rockwell

Porter Rockwell, also known as the Destroying Angel and the Mormon Samson, was Joseph Smith’s staunch bodyguard and one of the most feared figures in the history of early Mormonism. His story moves between service and violence: he helped Joseph evade arrest, was almost certainly the would-be assassin of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs, and later killed a militia officer whom he regarded as implicated in Joseph’s death. The book presents Rockwell not simply as a man of action, but as an embodiment of a religious culture in which prophecy, loyalty, and vengeance could converge.

Identity and Reputation

Rockwell was an accomplished horseman from Nauvoo who became closely identified with Joseph Smith as bodyguard and enforcer. His reputation rested in part on his willingness to spill the blood of people believed to have wronged the church. The book describes the religious logic attached to that reputation: some Saints believed that a person who had sinned against the church could atone through death. Rockwell’s actions therefore acquired meaning beyond private violence. Admirers called him the Destroying Angel and the Mormon Samson, names that made him a legendary instrument of punishment.

That image was sharpened by his apparent fearlessness and devotion to the prophet. Yet the evidence does not establish that Joseph directly ordered every act associated with Rockwell. Instead, the narrative emphasizes how a community’s understanding of prophetic duty could make an order seem unnecessary: after Joseph foretold Boggs’s violent death, Rockwell was widely suspected of acting to fulfill the prophecy. The distinction between explicit command and presumed sacred obligation is central to the account of his role.

The Boggs Assassination Attempt

The events surrounding Boggs began with the continuing threat of Joseph’s extradition to Missouri. After sheriffs arrested Joseph outside Nauvoo in 1841, he obtained release through habeas corpus, but the encounter intensified his anger at the harassment. Soon afterward, he publicly predicted that Boggs, Missouri’s retired governor and a hated adversary of the Saints, would die violently within a year.

On May 6, 1842, a gunman shot Boggs through a window as he read a newspaper in his Independence home. A pistol found in a puddle outside the study had recently been stolen from a local store. The storekeeper identified a customer matching Rockwell’s description: a Nauvoo horseman who had come to inspect the weapon shortly before it disappeared. Rockwell had arrived in Independence a couple of months before the shooting and slipped out of town immediately afterward. Although newspapers reported Boggs dead, he survived his severe injuries. The book concludes that Rockwell was almost certainly the would-be assassin, while stopping short of establishing that Joseph had ordered the attack.

Rockwell evaded arrest, and neither he nor another Saint was ever brought to justice for the attempted assassination. The episode gave force to the image of the Destroying Angel: a prophet’s prediction, a suspected act of violence, and a religious belief that Saints might help bring prophecy to pass. It also left an important uncertainty intact. The narrative links Rockwell to the attack through circumstance and broad contemporary suspicion, not through a direct confession or a demonstrated order from Joseph.

Escape, Death, and Retaliation

In June 1844, after the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor press and the growing threat of prosecution, Joseph and his brother Hyrum crossed the Mississippi River with Rockwell, who rowed them into Iowa. They intended to escape west toward the Rocky Mountains. Joseph returned the next day after receiving an urgent letter from Emma and learning that some Saints believed he had abandoned them. Rockwell was thus present not only as an enforcer but as a trusted companion in a moment when Joseph faced a choice between flight and surrender.

When Joseph was killed at Carthage Jail, Rockwell carried the news to Nauvoo at dawn on June 28. He rode into the waking city and announced the prophet’s death, making him the messenger through whom the community first encountered the loss. The Saints’ grief was accompanied by vows of revenge, while the church faced an immediate crisis over who could lead it. Rockwell’s own response soon became part of that cycle of retaliation.

In September 1845, Rockwell was on his way to help a Mormon family recover possessions from a burned home when he encountered Frank Worrell of the Carthage Greys. Worrell had been in charge of guarding the jail the night Joseph was murdered and had commanded the militiamen who, according to the account, enabled the assassins to reach the prophet. Worrell was pursuing a sheriff who had expressed sympathy for the Mormons when Rockwell shot and killed him. The killing deepened the already dangerous conflict between Saints and their adversaries. It was followed by further violence, including attacks on people suspected of burning Mormon homes, as arson and plunder spread across Hancock County.

Guide, Messenger, and Trusted Companion

Rockwell’s service extended beyond the episodes of suspected and confirmed violence. During the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, more than six hundred Saints died during the first grim winter of the migration. On July 21, 1847, an advance party saw the Great Salt Lake Valley; the next morning, Rockwell led the group down the western slope of the Wasatch through Emigration Canyon into the valley. His place at the head of the party made him part of the practical work of finding and entering a new home, not only the conflicts that had driven the Saints from Illinois.

A decade later, Rockwell again proved his value as a rider carrying urgent news. While transporting mail from Utah to Missouri, he learned that federal troops were preparing to march against the Saints. He turned back with Abraham Smoot and two companions to warn Brigham Young. At Fort Laramie, he hitched a buckboard to the two fastest horses in the Mormon corral and drove them hard over a 513-mile route, reaching Great Salt Lake City in just over five days. He and Smoot delivered the news on Pioneer Day, July 24, 1857, during the celebration marking ten years since the Saints’ arrival in Zion. Brigham announced the threat to the gathered community, and the news transformed the celebration into a moment of apprehension and preparation.

Rockwell’s role also included personal assistance to people caught in the consequences of violence. After Parley Pratt was murdered in Arkansas, his widow, Eleanor, made her way back toward Utah, destitute and dispirited. Near Fort Laramie she met Rockwell, who gave her a ride to Great Salt Lake City while he hurried to alert Brigham about the approaching army. Eleanor later gave church leaders a detailed account of Pratt’s murder and called for the Saints to avenge his death. In this episode Rockwell’s practical aid carried a report that entered an already charged atmosphere of fear, grievance, and impending conflict.

Legacy and Narrative Significance

Rockwell’s later public image was not confined to Mormon memory. In 1860, the English explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton met Brigham Young, Rockwell, and other Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City. Burton’s account praised Brigham’s force of will, secrecy, and political astuteness; Rockwell’s presence among the prominent figures encountered by the visitor reflects his standing within the community. The book does not portray that standing as a simple measure of approval. Rather, his notoriety reveals how the same qualities—loyalty, daring, and readiness to use force—could be celebrated within the Saints’ world while intensifying the hostility surrounding it.

Across these episodes, Rockwell is a recurring agent at moments when the community’s survival and its claims of justice seem inseparable from coercion. He escorts Joseph during flight, carries news of Joseph’s death, kills a man associated with the prophet’s murder, guides the first party into the new Zion, and races to warn Brigham of federal action. The pattern lends his career a stark coherence: he serves as guardian, avenger, guide, and courier, with the boundary between protection and violence repeatedly in question. His legend endures in the narrative because it concentrates a larger conflict into one person—the collision of prophetic authority, communal loyalty, and the human cost of vengeance.