Porter R. Blackstone

"Pierre Noire was born on August 17, 1840 in Nauvoo, Illinois, shortly after the city had been renamed from Commerce. The child of two French Icarians, Noire's parents converted to then growing Mormon faith in Nauvoo. With this, Noire's name was directly translated into English as Blackstone and he was given the new name of Porter Rockwell, after a prominent community leader. As a senior Icarian convert, Blackstone's father took several additional wives and fathered many more children - Blackstone does not know his exact number of siblings, but reckons it just be near half a hundred circa 1870. 

In 1846, the young Porter Rockwell Blackstone joined Brigham Young, the actual Porter Rockwell, his parents, and thousands of other Mormon families as they traveled west to Salt Lake City. In 1857, a youthful Porter Blackstone participated in the Utah War, though the unexpected violence of his co-religionists soured him on their supposed utopian ideals - by 1860, Blackstone was disconnected with his parents, siblings, and larger community, and further alienation was awaiting: at 19, Blackstone informally married a Ute woman, Chipeta Severo, and refused to engage in plural marriage. 

In 1861, despite Mormon neutrality during the Civil War, Blackstone joined Lot Smith's Nauvoo Legion to protect federal communication lines to California. When Robert Buchanan headed east from his station in California to join the Army of the Potomac, young Blackstone accompanied him and was enrolled into the federal army upon his arrival in Washington. In Buchanan's brigade, Blackstone saw action at the Peninsula Campaign, the Seven Days, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. By now a junior member of Buchanan's staff, Blackstone accompanied him on his redeployment to Fort Delaware. 

With the end of the war, Rockwell joined up with the Marshal Service and was stationed in New Orleans, again placing him in Buchanan's orbit as they worked in conjunction to enforce Reconstruction. During this time, Blackstone became increasingly embittered towards the federal government and what he saw as their inability or unwillingness to lay the issues to rest. 

By 1868, at his request, Blackstone was returned to Utah as a U.S. Marshal. While reconciliation with his extended family was by this point impossible, the return did reunite him with Chipeta and two children after seven years of separation. Until the arrival of Buchanan's letter, Blackstone has been hard at work (and failing) to preserve the balance between the Mormons and the Ute on behalf of the federal government. "