John Addison Porter

John Addison Porter (April 17, 1856 – December 15, 1900) was an American journalist, and the first person to hold the position of "Secretary to the President". He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and died in Pomfret, Connecticut.

Academic and professional life

Porter attended Hopkins Grammar School and the Russell Military Academy at New Haven, and graduated from Yale College with an A.B. in 1878. As an undergraduate, he served on the sixth editorial board of The Yale Record. He received an A.M. in American history from Yale in 1881. He studied law with his uncle, William Jarvis Boardman, in Cleveland, Ohio, but never practiced that profession.

In 1880 he joined the staff of the Hartford Observer. He was also a reporter for a brief time on the New Haven Daily Palladium and on the Hartford Courant. In 1882 he became literary editor of the New York Observer. Moving to Washington, D.C., he continued his newspaper work.

In 1884 he served as secretary to his uncle William Walter Phelps, a member of the House of Representatives, and also served as a clerk on the select Senate committee on Indian affairs.

Moving to Pomfret, Connecticut in 1886, he purchased a third interest in the Hartford Evening Post, and became managing editor and editor-in-chief. He sold the paper in 1899.

In 1886, he organized and ran the Oregon Publishing Company, There are two other Yale endowments that commemorate John Addison Porter. The first, the John Addison Porter Memorial Fellowship was established in 1901 by Mrs. Josephine S. Porter in memory of her husband and her son, both named John Addison Porter, and given for distinguished excellence and promise in the Department of English. 1910: William S. Culbertson, for Alexander Hamilton: An Essay 1918: Lawrence H. Gipson, for Jared Ingersoll: A Study of American Loyalism in Relation to British Colonial Government 1921: George Stewart, Jr., for A History of Religious Education in Connecticut to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century 1923: Dumas Malone, for The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 1928: George Herbert Ryden, for The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa 1929: Stanley McCrory Pargellis, for Lord Loudoun in North America 1934: Charles Roy Keller, for The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut 1937: Richard Irving Galland 1940: Liston Pope, for Millhands & Preachers: A Study of Gastonia 1983: Timothy Naftali 1985: Jeffrey A. Meyer, for Politics and Planning: Public Housing in Mount Vernon, New York 1989: Dale Carpenter 2006: Stephen Butler 2010: Philip Gant 2021: Kaley Pillinger and Keshav Raghavan 2024: Rachel Bitutsky and Elisa Kravitz 2025: Carmen Lopez Villamil and Jenesis Nwainokpor