John Porter ^{1 2}

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Book: Autobiography of brother Anthony Toomer Porter, 1898. ³
After taking up her residence in Georgetown, my mother retained her wish that her children should be educated in the North, and in 1836 she sent my brother John to the Rev. Mr. Chester at Morristown, New Jersey, to school. He remained there some years, and there was a remarkable circumstance connected with his return.

Mr. Chester wrote mother that her son would return on the steamer Home, to sail from New York. This was a pioneer steamer, being a North River boat which had been cut in two and lengthened. From a dream, or a presentiment, my mother became possessed with the idea that her son had better not come home in that boat, and she wrote at once to Mr. Chester. It required six or seven days then to get a letter to New Jersey, and John had been sent to New York. After he left, Mr. Chester received the peremptory letter. He hastened to New York, and arrived at the steamer after the planks had been drawn in, and just before the ropes had been thrown off. He managed to get to the captain, and told him to put John Porter on shore. It was with some difficulty that he succeeded, but at last the trunk was put out, the passenger came on shore, and started home by land. The Home encountered a gale off Hatteras, and quickly went to pieces. If I remember rightly, only one passenger, a French milliner of Charleston, saved herself by floating ashore on a sofa.

I remember the agony of my mother; she was certain her son was on the steamer. She had not heard from Mr. Chester. The same storm had played havoc on land; all communication by stage had been interrupted. The first information we had, was from brother John's arrival home on one of the stage horses. The stage had been wrecked, as well as the steamer, and the driver had cut his horses loose and mounted his passengers on them. It seems but as yesterday. I remember my brother's forlorn look as he rode up to the house, and my mother's rapturous joy as she recognized her son whom she had given up as lost.


It was somewhere in 1839 that my brother John returned from Morristown, of which I have already spoken. He went to Charleston, and entered the counting-house of Mr. George Y. Davis. He was then in his eighteenth year, and old enough to look into the affairs of my grandfather's estate. He found serious evidences of mismanagement, and in the fall of 1840 he left the counting-house and went to the two plantations to take charge of the interests of the estate.

In August of 1841 there was a severe storm and heavy freshet, causing a large break in the river bank. The rice was at that stage that the broken bank had to be mended, or the crop would be lost. My brother, full of energy and resolve, took it in hand, and with all the force of slaves worked day and night, and succeeded in his efforts. His clothes were wet for many hours. When he had put the fields in order, he came down to North Island, at the mouth of Winyah Bay, to the family summer resort. But the deadly climate had done its work. Nine days after his wetting, he was taken with high bilious fever, or country fever, as it is known in this latitude, and on the fifth day he died, in his twentieth year. My mother was herself very sick at the same time and never saw him. I was standing by his bedside, and just before he died, he clasped his hands and said, "Conduct us, Heavenly Father, to Thy throne, and there kneeling let us praise Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord." We took his body, on the 10th of September, to Georgetown, and laid him beside our father, and the sister who had died in 1835.
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