John Thomas Jr. Porter

Other Events and Attributes:

• Name: John Porter
• Death: 1810, , Allegany, Maryland

Notes:

See the notes asociated with John's alleged father, John Porter (b. abt. 1690) for the questions which exist as to whether John Thomas Porter, Jr. was the father of Gabriel McKenzie Porter.

Regarding Rose Meadows:

John Porter settled between Cumberland and Frostburg in 1792 on a farm known as Rose Meadows, from the profusion of wild roses which grew there. John built a substantial house on a south slope which remained in the family until about 1864. At that time, the owner, William R. Porter, sold it to a mining company who wanted it for the coal and tan-bark. The homestead came back into the family about 1916 when it was purchased by Walter and Celia Porter Engle. There is no trace of the house today, but a sketch painting thereof is in the possession of the Engle family. The Porter Cemetery, sometimes called the Rose Meadows Cemetery, is located a short distance north of the site. (From the book "A Genealogy of the Porter Family of Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan" by Samuel Doak Porter.

The John Porter and his brother Moses who helped survey the Mason-Dixon Line served in the Revolutionary War in Capt. Paxton's Bedford County militia (The John Porter and his brother Moses who helped survey the Mason-Dixon
Line served in the Revolutionary War in Capt. Paxton's Bedford County militia(Pa. Archives, 5th Series, Vol. V. page 116) (Pa. Archives, 5th Series, Vol. V. page 116)

The following email was sent to Don Kagle by Alan Williams on September 10, 2018. In essence the hunt for the parents of John, Moses and Henry Porter goes on as of September, 2018.

I do appreciate that info Dick, I was unaware of the Scritchfield effort.

We are cousins of the Scritchfields through Margaret Porter, born in Bedford County PA 1805 and died there in 1852, my 2nd Cousin 4 x removed. She married John Burley, and one of their children, Catherine, born 1838, married Samuel Scritchfield in 1863.

Margaret Porter was a child of William Porter and Mary Nelson and a granddaughter of Moses Porter and Margaret McKenzie.

John, Moses and Henry, Porter Brothers, are the oldest verifiable links in our line. Samuel Doak Porter (SDP) and Col. McKenzie (whose notes we hope will yield insight into their thinking) recounted the idea of the Singing Emigrant, John Porter, Catholic/Jacobite protester landing in Maryland @1715 and marrying the Huguenot of Swiss origin, Elinor Durier.

That story has been in dispute since it first saw print, and a Baltimore Sun article in 1912 that claimed John was an ‘Irish immigrant who landed in Boston’ got an angry rebuke in the next week’s letters to the editors from Glissan T. Porter, lawyer and newspaperman of Allegany County, who faithfully recounted the story SDP printed in the Bluebook.

Since then, based on a baptismal record for a John Porter 1697 found in England, people have ‘built trees’ going back to Charlemagne. (I don’t know why it’s always Charlemagne, apparently he was father to us all.)

We’ve got so many lines of investigation open into who Henry John and Moses parents were! But its far to early to burden you all with the possibilities. I am certain that

A. They had parents.
B. They are Brothers.
C. We have dug into many of the same ‘suspects’ that SDP and others have examined. So many, in fact, that I’ve become only too conversant with all the Porter/Portes/Borter lines of the Mid-Atlantic. I’ve had to build so many family trees to keep track of them so we can avoid running over old clues and thinking them to be fresh.

That said, we don’t think we’re at a brick wall. Now with DNA and better organized records, we’re able to fairly quickly rule a theory in or out of play. Part of the problem is that SDP claimed many children for our First John, quickly announced that ‘nothing more is known of them’ for 4, and then also passed Henry quickly out of view, so the bulk of his work revolves around (solely) John and Moses in Allegany County and their descendants.

People have long associated John Henry and Moses with the ‘Arnold Settlement’ and had assumed a bridge back to Carrollton. That’s where we are. Asserting anything back to the 15th Century is wishful thinking.

John married Nancy Ann McKenzie in 1767 in Carroll County, Maryland. Nancy (daughter of Moses Sr. McKenzie and Nancy Jane (Rachel) Porter) was born in Hopson's Choice, Maryland; died after 1789 in Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Michael Porter was born about 1768 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died in UNKNOWN.
2. Samuel Porter was born about 1770 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died about 1828.
3. Thomas Porter was born about 1772 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died on 24 Apr 1854 in Knox County, Ohio.
4. Gabriel McKenzie Porter was born on 17 Sep 1776 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died on 20 Apr 1842 in Tinsman Station, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
5. Henry Porter was born in 1778 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died in UNKNOWN.
6. Moses Porter was born in Apr 1781 in Carrollton, Carroll County, Maryland; died on 2 Nov 1861 in Eckhart Mines, Allegany County, Maryland.
7. John M. (Squire Jack) Porter was born on 24 Jun 1783 in Wellersburg, Somerset County, Pennsylvania; died on 15 Feb 1863 in Rose Meadows, Maryland.
8. Elizabeth Eleanor (Nellie) Porter was born about 1785 in Wellersburg, Somerset County, Pennsylvania; died in 1855 in Allegany County, Maryland.

Notes:

The earliest ancestor known in our direct Porter line was John Porter. He was born in England in 1694 and came to America in 1715 from "Glouchester near Bristol." He died in 1776. According to accounts, it is believed he was a member of the "Jacobite" party or movement in England. This was a Catholic political party in opposition to King George 1. John Porter is reported to have fled England about 1715 because he "made himself obnoxious to the party in power by singing his own composition(song) at a gathering of his neighbors, which was very uncomplimentary to the ruling monarch, King George 1", on which account he was obliged to flee the country. He settled in Carrollton, which was in Baltimore, about 1715.(The area where he settled is now Carroll Co., MD) Information found in "A Genealogy of the Porter Family of Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan" by Samuel Doak Porter 1896-1966

The information written above was pulled by the writer, Michael A. McKenzie from some secondary source when he first started his genealogical research. In August, 2018, the writer became acquainted with the Williams family, Dave, Alan and Scott and Dave's son, Nathan. They are prodigious researchers of all things Porter, as well as McKenzie. As of August, they had searched for primary sources to try to corroborate what is written above.

In their/our quest for genealogical accuracy, Scott wrote to the writer in August 2018, as follows:

But I recognize and appreciate the need for accuracy and precision. Gotta have that. We owe much to the Scharfs and others who published what we call the "local vanity histories" beginning in the 1870s or so. Great, broad pieces of history captured there, seems like every county has one. In general they are accurate as to when people arrived, generally who they were, and which ones of them became doctors and lawyers :)

These vanity histories have begun to appear as brick walls to us in our research, though. Scharf 1883 is the oldest reference we can find for John Porter, the Singing Jacobite of 1715. The tome below is the oldest print reference that we can point to for the "M" in Gabriel M. Porter's moniker. (Writer's note: the "tome" referenced is Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Fayette County PA., by Samuel T. Wiley. Published 1889. Inside the cover, there is a reference to it being located at the Cornell University Library. Scott found it on Google Books and sent it to the writer.) He is the only one of John Porter Jr's children to have a middle name in SDP's book and it is "McKenzie".

So genealogy will always have these uncertainties and they should be carefully footnoted. I guess that my focus on the larger sweep of history and context is a sort of balm against the burns caused by all those courthouse fires.

In the end we may have to say with regard to John Thomas Porter, Jr.:

"Legend has it that John Porter swung aboard a ship in Bristol Harbor in 1715 one step ahead of the law. History shows that people believed to be descended from him were among the early settlers of the Maryland colony and their subsequent descendents were witnesses to and participants in the founding of the United States of America. Genealogists have documented the following facts regarding your ancestors.". . or words to that effect :)

Writer's note: As of August, 2018, the secondary source listed above concerning Fayette County, Pennsylvania is the earliest known version of the "Singing Jacobite" story.

Scott Williams' brother Dave responded in August, 2018 with the following:

Schooled as an anthropologist and employed in the marketing communications biz for three decades, I am a student of spin in all things...even in reference to the science of antiquity.

Historical facts have always been somewhat variable, based on who assembled them and why. God love our so-far mythical "John Porter The Emigrant" ancestor. I mean who wouldn't love to have a bawdy bold ancestor who was shipped to our shores for raising musical cane against the King in an English pub. What could be more American.

Scott's on the money. Much of America's self-view can be traced back to a boom in publishing that followed the Civil War. Standard perspectives on virtually everything from the heroes of the Revolution to Annie Oakley are linked to the 1880s and were carried into public education and popular media well into this century, without any large concern that these were all second hand histories.

The rise of blue blood aristocracy fervor over family heritage seems to take off in the 1920s as both an object of family pride and a formal pedigree game.

Luckily, we all live in the golden age of available source records, aided by the Internet and encouraged by a new generation of biographers led by David McCullough who reject second hand histories and directly seek records and correspondence "from the day."

This is great fun to actually unite the superpowers of MOEM and the Porters of Federal Hill into a search for clarification as to exactly how close these families were in colonial times in Western Maryland.

Dave Williams

Nathan Williams added:

Alright time to let the cat out of the bag. Nobody to our knowledge has ever found a single documented piece of evidence about John Porter, emigrant. No evidence of: port of departure, port of arrival, birth, baptism, marriage, kids, land ownership, indenture, will, probate, nothing, nada, zero. Yes, there was a John Porter who lived in Gloucestershire and has records in Bishop Cleeves church, but we have no idea how or why some researcher decided this was our John Porter. We literally can not prove our John Porter existed, other than the reality that John Jr. (who never goes by "Jr." in any record I have seen), Moses, and Henry Porter shared the same father, and he likely had a first and last name ??

To the best our knowledge, what is known about him was oral history until the historian Scharf recorded the story of "The Singing Patriot" in his History of Western Maryland in the 1880s. The story was specifically attached to the biography of Glissan Porter, a descendant of John Porter-Bedford/Allegany. Glissan wrote a letter to the editor of the Cumberland paper telling the story in a nearly identical way, which makes us believe he was the source for the historian, Scharf. Glissan is one of three Porter cousins (the others are Frank Porter and Ellsworth Porter,) who wrote down family histories at roughly the same time. All there agree on some points of the story, but disagree on others. So, there is likely at least a seed of truth to the story of John "The Signing Patriot" Porter, but we have opened our research and are exploring angles not related to the first name "John"nor the state of Maryland because years and years of research by dozens of people have failed to turn up anything here at al

Likewise, we can find no records of the three brothers, John, Moses, and Henry Porter, until they appear in Bedford/Allegany County in the 1770s. This is despite the claims that John Porter Jr. bought land from Charles Carroll, lived in Carrolton, married Nancy McKenzie down there, worked for Mason and Dixon, etc. etc. To be blunt, we have no proof these people ever did anything in Maryland before they show up in our neck of the woods........and two were in PA, not Maryland.

The obvious problem here is that early Porter oral history claims 4 marriages between Porters and McKenzies.

Daniel McKenzie (1715-1783) + Mary (Molly) Porter (1719-1784)
Moses McKenzie Sr. (1720-1774) + Nancy Jane Rachael Porter (take your pick of first name)
Margaret McKenzie + Moses Porter (1735-1794) (this Moses Porter is the one whose will Aaron McKenzie is witness to.)
John Porter Jr. (1737-1810) + Nancy Ann McKenzie (supposed niece of Porter based on the 'standard mode" view of her being Moses Sr. and Nancy Porter's daughter.)

I personally cringe that despite this number of supposed connections, and the rich oral history saying these two families were fellow travelers, and we can't find a single primary source record for ANY of it on the Porter end.

which is why.............


Writer’s note: the bottom line as of August, 2018 is that although the Williams’ have struggled mightily to locate primary source documentation concerning John Porter (b. abt. 1690) and John Thomas Porter, Jr. (b. 1737), nephew Nathan Williams summed it best when he wrote in late August, 2018: "As researchers, we struggle mightily with the reality we can't place ANY of our known Porters in Maryland before they show up in Bedford, PA. Their PA record is the first confirmed appearance of John and Moses Porter. Henry is in Maryland for the 1776 loyalty oath. I will let my Uncle Scott answer Allan (McKenzie) specifically about John Porter, emigrant, but to be honest, he is a ghost. We have no records in the US to show he existed. Our paper trail starts with his alleged sons John, Moses, and Henry Porter on the frontier."

W/r/t the sons of this John Porter (b. abt. 1690), Nathan Williams wrote in August, 2018, as follows: Likewise, we can find no records of the three brothers, John, Moses, and Henry Porter, until they appear in Bedford/Allegany County in the 1770s. This is despite the claims that John Porter Jr. bought land from Charles Carroll, lived in Carrolton, married Nancy McKenzie down there, worked for Mason and Dixon, etc. etc. To be blunt, we have no proof these people ever did anything in Maryland before they show up in our neck of the woods........and two were in PA, not Maryland.

Alan Williams wrote: Only John, Moses and Henry can be verified. The others are all names tagged on by Samuel Doak Porter on the flimsiest of claims. “Mrs. Barcus said she saw an Old Family Bible that said…” That is the same source of the ‘Elinor Durier’ said to be the first John Porter’s wife. mother of John, Moses and Henry.

Gabriel is in my tree only because I initially (several years ago!) used SDP at face value. In his own work, SDP names the others and then says words to effect, ‘sadly no more is known of them’.

John + Eleanor Durier. Eleanor was born in May 1704 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England; died in 1778 in Baltimore County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

There are no known primary sources establishing Eleanor Durier as the wife of John Porter (b. abt. 1690)