Edward G. Porter

Edward Griffin Porter (January 24, 1837 – February 5, 1900)

Early life Nathan Carruth's home at 24 Beaumont Street in Dorchester (c. 1879), where Porter grew up Porter was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1837 to Royal Loomis Porter and Sarah Ann Pratt. He was their middle child, between Royal Francis ("Frank") and William Rogers. Porter's father, who was a descendant of the first settler of East Hartford, Connecticut Colony, was editor and proprietor of the Boston Traveller, a newspaper established in 1825. In the April 30 edition of The Literary World, it was described as "a stately quarto got up with a high degree of mechanical excellence, and in every respect deserves earnest praise."

Personal life

In 1853, having turned 16, Porter joined the Second Church of Dorchester, which was then under the ministry of Reverend James H. Means. In 1858, after graduating Harvard College, he sailed around Europe, for what was initially supposed to be six months, with his mother; he did not return to America until July 1861, however, after which he attained a degree in Master of Arts from Andover Theological Seminary. He traveled again in 1866―to England, Switzerland, Italy, Malta and Greece―and to Turkey, India, China and Japan in 1887 and 1888.

In 1868, Porter was ordained minister of Hancock Congregational Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, a role in which he remained for 23 years. Upon retirement, he was made Pastor Emeritus and remained a resident of Lexington.

Porter was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1876 and, four years later, a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He was also a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, which was established in 1892, and of the American Historical Association.

In the last few years of his life, Porter was researching the path which, in colonial times, led from Boston, through Worcester, to Springfield.

In his final year, he was elected president of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and was elected to fellowship in the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity.

Death Porter died in 1900, aged 63, at the Ashmont home of his mother. He was interred in Dorchester's Cedar Grove Cemetery, alongside his mother and all five of his siblings. (His father was buried beside Edward's grandfather in Westlawn Cemetery in Williamstown, Massachusetts. )

Samuel Swett Green, president of the American Library Association, wrote a memoir of Porter in 1900.