Mary Rose Porter

Notes:

CRESAPTOWN - Mary (Porter) Coleman, 61, of 12816 McKay Avenue, Cresaptown, died Sunday Feb. 28, 1993 at Frostburg Hospital. Born May 10, 1931 in Cresaptown, she was the daughter of the late J. Marshall Porter and Elizabeth (Jeffries) Porter. She was also preceded in death by one brother, Marshall Wesley Porter. Mrs. Coleman was a member of Cresaptown United Methodist Church, where she was secretary for 25 years. She also was a member of the adult fellowship of the church. Survivors include her husband, Charles Coleman; three sons, John Coleman and wife Delia Coleman, Cresaptown, Gary Coleman, home, Jeff Coleman and wife Kathy Coleman, Corriganville; one daughter, Rene Whittington, La Vale; two sisters, Betty Stewert, Cresaptown and Elaine Stouffer, Clear Spring; four grandchildren, Jim Coleman, Mary Jane Sackett, Angela Marie Coleman, John Marshall Coleman. Friends will be received Monday from 7 to 9 and Tuesday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. in the Sowers Funeral Home, Frostburg. Services will be held Wednesday at 1 p.m. in the funeral home by the Rev. Harold R. McClay Jr. Interment will be at Frostburg Memorial Park. Pallbearers will be Bob Whittington Sr., Dave Porter, Dan Porter, Jim Stewert, Paul Cordial, and Charles Orndorff. Memorial contributions can be made to Cresaptown United Methodist Church. The Cumberland Times News, March 1, 1993

Mary married Charles Colemen in Private. Charles was born in Private. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. John Colemen was born in Private.
2. Gary Colemen was born in Private.
3. Jeff Colemen was born in Private.

Notes:

He was buried in Frostburg Memorial Park, Frostburg, Allegany Co., Maryland.

The following is from John Marshall Porter's "Sketches of Maryland Porters", circa 1976. Scott Carter Williams brought it to the attenetion of Michael A. McKenzie in 2018.

FOREWARD

When I decided to try to write an account of the Maryland Porters I had no intention of writing a genealogy. Frank Porter, who grew up on a farm adjoining Play Place on Piney Mountain, and was a bosom friend as well as a first cousin of my father wrote what is likely the most complete account of our people that will ever be written. He wrote it nearly a half century ago when many of our people were still living, and could give him first hand information on members of the families.

It was From Frank's account that Samuel D. Porter got much of his start for his fine genealogy of the Maryland and Michigan Porters that he completed in 1966. So there is no need for another genealogy.

What I am writing is mainly character sketches of the branch of the family I came down from... and much of that is from memory of what my father, and Uncle Mike, the only one of Dad's brothers I ever knew told me. I also got some information from Sophia Griffith, Uncle Si's daughter who is now confined in a nursing home in Cumberland, half blind, almost totally deaf and 93. (Sophia died May3, 1976)

I have wished so many times these latter years that I had written
the conversations of Uncle Mike and my father when I heard the old stories and incidents over and over every time they got together. They didn't seem important then, and I had never given a thought to the fact that I might want to write about it in later years. But then during the past year I began thinking more about writing an account of the Maryland Porters, as I knew, heard of and remember them. I became more and more convinced that "If I didn't write it, it would probably never be written, first because there are so few still living, and I know of none of them who can write. Also, I feel certain that none could give any account of Squire Mike... and nether could I except from memory of what I heard over a period of many years.

When we consider that when the first John Porter came to Southern Maryland in 1715, our country was a half century away from independence as we know it. It seems that his descendents were destined to become
pioneer landbreakers, and were a part of the great movement of making farms of the raw, new country that America was at that time.

Porters came to Wellersburg, Pa., to Mt. Savage, Md. To the areas oF Eckhart and Frostburg, Md. All of them found themselves a tract of virgin forest and went to work making a farm for himself. Later generations moved to West Virginia and cleared farms, and still later their descendents moved to Michigan, all to follow the traditions and occupations of their forefathers.

From somewhere in the line of ancestry these Porters inherited a refinement or gentleness, not always found in many mountain people. Feuds were prevalent all through the lower Appalachian regions. They
would begin from a trivial remark or an incident of little consequence and clans or factions would be killing one another for a half century. It has been said that "The Mountain people hate as long as they remember; and
they never forget."

From the beginning, the Porters seemed to be bent on clearing enough land to make farms, then generation after generation of their people lived off the same land. I have never heard of a grudge or feud being held by any of them between themselves nor with neighbors.

They were thrifty people who were content to work for what they got, and tried to save a little for their old age.

Foreward

None of the descendents of Squire Mike ever made big marks in the world in the sense of becoming someone important or famous. Yet they became solid, hard working, honest citizens, which after all, has always been the backbone of our America.

SKETCHES AND STORIES
Of
THE MARYLAND PORTERS


Perhaps no one will ever trace the Maryland Porters beyond 1715, when John Porter arrived from England to locate in the Calvert Settlement in Maryland as a fugitive. It is said that he was a Jacobite, which meant that he was of the Reman Catholic party who held out against King George I, who was anxious to rid the predominantly protestant nation of England of all who opposed his doctrine.

What made matters worse for John was that he composed and sang satirical songs against the king as he led his groups of opposers. He was given a choice of going to prison or leaving England. He chose to retain his belief and come to America. That trait of standing up for belief and convictions has been a trait of all the generations of the Porters since.

Being a Roman Catholic in his native England, he somehow must have been assured or at least conscious of a peaceful place to locate in the New World. Lord Baltimore had established a sanctuary in the colony
of Maryland which gave emigrating Catholics assurance of a place where they would be free from hostilities of religious prejudices which were so preva¬ lent in those early times.

We can only surmise or speculate on John's reason for choosing to locate in Maryland. History records that the Calvert's rule and Catholic authority in Maryland had come to an end in 1694, around the time of John's birth. It is likely that the emigrants who came in great numbers during that period found many more and better things to do than hate and prosecute their fellowmon because of religious differences.

Having arrived in 1715, John would have been 21 years old then.

It has also been suspected that John came as an indentured servant, because many young men and women came to the Colonies as such. It meant that a plantation owner or other business man would pay the passage of young Euro¬ peans to America, then they worked an agreed length of time (average three years,) for the man who financed their passage, and they became free American citizens.

I have corresponded with a number of our Porter relatives who have tried to learn more about John who came in 1715. Deeds and records have been searched in the locality of Carrollton, Md., where he married a lady named
Durier. But no records were found of him owning land. Nor has anyone been successful in learning of his work or profession, the date of his death, nor place of burial.

From the writings of Frank Porter, and Samuel D. Porter, John was the father of eight children, seven sons and one daughter. But they give only the dates of births and deaths of his sons John and Moses...Moses, born 1735, died 1794. John, born 1737, died 1810. John's daughter Mary or Molly married Daniel McKenzie. The name McKenzie was, and still is legion in many areas of Maryland, and appears frequently in the Porter relationship.

It is logical to suppose that John, the Jacobite had educated at least two of his sons, because Moses and John worked with the surveying party of Charles Mason and Jerimiah Dixon during the years 1763 and 1767 when the historic Mason-Dixon line was established. And, since that famous line that divides the north and the south runs very near Wellersburg, it is reasonable to suppose that those brothers saw land in that area that appealed to them because they later located on farms in the area. It is also reasonable to suppose that John met and married Nancy Ann McKenzie while helping survey the line, because records give the date of their marriage as 1767.

The genealogists seem to know only that John's brother Moses married a woman named Margaret, but do not give her family name. However, in latter generations the offspring of Moses and his wife Margaret come back in line of descendants, and the family connections are easily recognized.

Moses and John Porter both served in the Revolutionary War with Captain Paxton's Bedford County Militia. Then it is recorded that John helped with surveying soldier lots in the Wellersburg and Mt. Savage area that were awarded soldiers for their services in the war. It is also recorded that for John's part in the surveying, he was given his choice of land on which to make a farm for himself.

Scharff's History of Western Maryland says that John Porter settled between Cumberland and Frostburg in 1792 on a farm named "Rose Meadoxvs," so named because of the profusion of wild roses which grew there. That might in¬ dicate that it could have been a vast tract of rolling land that had been im¬ poverished by long cultivation, because wild roses are partial to such land. They never grow profusely in shaded woods or virgin forest. On the other hand, it could have been an early buffalo range, which after the buffalo were hunted to extinction the land was left barren.

From Frank Porter's writings we learn that John built a stone house there on a southern slope, which again would indicate that the land was not occupied when it was purchased.

Such land was purchased for a few cents per acre then. Also, much land in those days was obtained by "'Squatter's Rights," which meant that a settler could stake out a tract, build a cabin on it and begin clearing the land. If, after a few years he recorded and began paying taxes on it, he received a deed for it and became the owner.

The future generations of our line of Maryland Porters descend principally from two of John's sons, Samuel and Gabriel. They grew up on Rose Meadows farm. Families were large in those days. John had eight sons, and a daughter, Nellie. Aside from John's son John, who became known as "Squire Jack," and in later years, owner of Rose Meadows Farm. It is recorded that Nellie married, first a Mattingly..,second a Winters. But there is little known of John's five other sons
.
Samuel, who married Sarah Jane Anderson bought a tract of land on Piney Mountain south east of Rose Meadows that was known as Play Place from his father-in-law, or the Anderson heirs.

Gabriel, who married Rebecca Frost in the Catholic Church at Mt. Savage rented a farm adjoining Rose Meadows from a mining Company. In later years, there was some intermarriage with n.:ar and distant cousins of the descendants of Samuel and Gabriel, of which I shall write later.

The land Samuel bought from the Anderson heirs was mostly virgin forest and required many years of hard toil to remove the timber and get the steep, rocky land cleared and ready to grow crops. In time, the red shale soil, and the altitude of around 2200 feet was conducive to making it good land for groining potatoes. But that was not in Samuel's day. Samuel was a great hunter, and one of the best marksmen in the County. He also took a keen interest in politics and public affairs in the young and growing Allegany County. Much of the land was cleared by Samuel's sons, John, Michael, "Squire Mike," and William.

Michael, "Squire Mike," who was my great grandfather was a scholar. In those days, few men thought of education from books or institutions of learn¬ ing as a way of making their living. They thought that knowledge of how to live from the land was the best security a man could have. But Mike attended Catholic schools in Cumberland, and once considered entering the priesthood. He l'ved with a burning desire for learning, and spent all his spare moments
reading and studying such books as he could get. He attained intelligence far above most of the men of his locality and time.

Up to the time of Mike's marriage to Elizabeth Dcore, all the Porters had remained devout Roman Catholics, the faith of their fathers. He became a student and inveterate reader of the Holy Bible. (Lest I forget to mention it
later in my story, I will state that Great Grandfather Mike's bible is in our home at this moment. It is warp-backed, faded, yellow and brittle, but still almost intact and readable. It has been extensively used. I can't find the date of publication, but it is at least a hundred and fifty years old.)

Squire Mike's wife was a Methodist, and his marriage coincided with the Francis Asbury evangelistic crusade on the frontier. I have never heard whether or not the marriage was solemnized by a priest; but that was almost a 'must' by devout Catholics, even though they didn't continue on in the faith.

But Mike and his brother John became devout Methodists, and I have heard my father say, "As Mike and John went, so went most of the Porters." During the latter half of his life, Mike with the help of his brother John, turned most of the descendants of John the Jacobite to the Methodist Church. It has remained the faith of most of the Maryland Porters, and the descendants of John that still live in West Virginia.

To the end of his life, Mike remained a man of strong convictions. He was highly respected for his good business and Christian judgment. Being about the only man in the Porter Settlement who could read and write, he was contacted to write deeds, contracts and wills (all with a goose quill pen.) It was to Mike that all the men of the Settlement came for legal advice and Affairs they had no knowledge of. It was to him they came for advice on crop and livestock management.

In his foresight, Mike began to realize the handicap of the lack of education, even in that early agrarian society of self reliant men who had good knowledge of living off the land. He realized that he would grow old and a time would come when he would no longer be in their midst to attend their business affairs. So he began conducting a school in his home for the children of the ever growing Porter Settlement... no charge.

But here I will say that, while Squire Mike taught most of the children in classes he held in his log house home for twenty years, he neglected to teach his own sons and daughters. I have heard my father say
that neither his father John S. nor any of his brothers or sisters could read or write. On the other hand, the school teaching could have begun after his own children were grown.

Souire Mike was a devout Christian. He would not allow a word of obscenity or profanity spoken in his home. It was said that he would have told a King or President who swore "We don't allow such language in our home."

Frank Porter wrote of him, "He was a man who would give courtesy, and demand respect. He would pray with a sinner, or fight a blackguard."

Squire Mike was a stern abolitionist. As far as I can learn, none of the Porters in our line ever owned a slave.
He had no use for anyone who was in sympathy with the South. One of his daughters married, a southerner named Kimberly, who had come from Tennesse. From his conversation, it was obvious that he favored the South. It was said that Souire Mike came near making outcasts of his daughter and her family. They lived on an adjoining farm, and were treated almost like they didn't exist. I suppose it was just another manifestation of Porters standing firm for what they believed was right or wrong.

While the conversion to Methodism was in progress, Squire Mike held worship services in his home and served as preacher.

As far as I have been able to learn, there were only two families of the area, (neither of them Porters) who remained in the Catholic faith after the mini-reformation that began when Mike and his brother John turned to Metho¬ dism. But I will add that the Porters never turned against the Catholic Church. They turned away from it. I would rather believe that the} followed the faith of Mike and John.

Frank Porter, who was a son of Squire Mike's youngest son William, and grew up in the Porter Settlement on Piney Mountain, spoke often of "Grandpap Mike" in the many letters he wrote me. Frank was only 11 years old when Mike died in 1877. Yet he told me of the influence of Grandpap Mike, and how it had affected his life in later years. In one of his letters, he told me that he had heard him spend a half hour every morning praying aloud for guidance of his family and neighbors. And he said special prayers for his grandchildren.

Frank wrote me that when his children were born he began following Squire Mike's practice of praying daily for their guidance and keeping. "They both became good Christians and useful citizens. My prayers have been answered," he stated.

Frank advised me to follow Grandpap Mike's practice of praying daily for our then young family. Though I have never been given to praying aloud, I have prayed silently for our children from that day to this. Our four children are grown now and have families of their own. And my praying continues for our grandchildren, and all generations yet to come.

Like Frank, I believe that my prayers have been answered. Our children are good Christians and useful citizens. Our family is a joy and comfort to their mother and me.

There seems to be no record of when Scuire Mike's wife Elizabeth died, nor whether she lived to see her children grow up. My father, John Wesley Porter, was fifteen years old when his grandfather Squire Mike died. I have heard him speak often of Grandpap, but he had no recollection of his grandmother, though he had heard that she died from the bite of a venemous snake.

Copperheads and rattlesnakes were numerous and a constant summer menace in the early Porter Settlement, (and in all other mountain settlements of those times.) I have heard my father say it was not unusual to encounter and kill a half dozen snakes in a day when they were harvesting grain.

It is ironic, and I might add "Tragic" that Squire Mike sold the mineral and coal rights of Play Place for $600.00 when the land came into his possession. As it turned out, millions of tons of coal were mined from under the land since then, and his descendants scratched hard for the living they got from the stony, hilly fields that covered it. Mike didn't believe there were any minerals under it. Cataracts clouded the vision of the wise and far seeing eyes of
Souire Mike a number of years before his death. But many who knew him said
that what he lacked in sight was well retained in his brilliant mind. He died in 1877, and is buried in the Porter graveyard.

John Porter...Son of Samuel, and Brother of Scuire Mike, grew up on Play Place, the land Samuel bought from the Anderson heirs. The Porter genealogy gives Oct. 3, 1815 as the date John married Hannah Combs. Nine
children, (two of whom died in infancy) were born to them over the next twenty years. My father never spoke much of his Uncle John. He could have spoken only from hearsay because John died in 1862, and my father was born in 1863. So we can only speculate on why John chose to move his growing family from the rough mountain backwoods of the Porter Settlement of Piney Mountain to the much rougher backwoods of Preston County, (Virginia) then. The state didn't become West Virginia until 1863. But in April of 1841, with the aid of George Clise, Squire Mike's son-in-law, he and his wife and seven children traveled for five days to cover the eighty miles of mountain roads from Allegany County, Maryland, to the area of Horse Shoe Run, in Preston County.

John's wife, Hannah, who had long been suffering the effects of paralysis died three years after the moving. Records say it was the year 1844, and that she was buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery, near Aurora, W. Va.

John's older children were of marriageable age by that time, and some of them married into the families they came to live among.

It has been written that the land John moved to was raw wilderness then, and much of their living was from the wild game of the forests. But being a Porter, and with knowledge of clearing and farming land, it is certain that with the help of his sons, he soon had a farm cleared. John and his youngest daughter Ellen lived with his son Samuel until his death in 1862.

Within the next twenty years, John's children had all married and had farms of their own. John Myers Lawrence, third son of John married Emily Domire and bought a farm at Lead Mine, a distance of 15 miles south of Horse Shoe Run. He ran a small store and was the first Postmaster of that small community.

Little more can be learned of the period of time John and Hannah's children spent in Preston County. And we can only speculate as to what made so many of them and their families decide to move to the area of Blissfield,
Michigan in 1864. Whether they learned of better and easier ways to cultivate land there, or if a big lumber company came and made them good offers for their land, either of which could have been their reasons. But in that year, a train left Oakland, Md. and hauled the personal property, including household effects, live stock and farm implements and 84 people to Lewanne,Co. near Blissfield, Michigan.

All of John's living sons, and several daughters left Preston County with that group, except John Myers Lawrence whom records say, didn't go to Michigan until 1870.

John's oldest son William Thomas Porter had married Susan Sell. He was a minister, and owned a farm. He died in 1858, six years before the migration to Michigan. I have been on the farm formerly owned by William Thomas numerous times, and have photographed his fallen tombstone and forgotten resting place that is somewhere between the house and barn on that farm. The inscript¬ ion on that smooth, maroon granite stone reads William Thomas Porter, Born 1820...Died 1858. He was only 38 years old.

I have been told by distant relatives whom I chance to meet in that area that Susan Sell Porter re-married some years after William Thomas died.

Several of the children of William Thomas Porter and Susan Sell went to Michigan to live among the Porters in later years. But a number of them stayed in Preston County, and many of their descendants still live there.

Also, John's daughter Maria, who married Steven Harsh did not go to Michigan with her brothers and sisters. Many of her descendants still live in Preston County, and other sections of West Virginia.

Samuel Doak Porter, a great grandson of John who moved to Preston Co. compiled a genealogy of the Maryland and West Virginia Porters. He did a remarkable job considering, as he wrote me in one of his many letters, "So many of the letters I wrote to gather information of the various descendants fell on deaf ears." Thus, some of the lines of descendants are either omitted or incomplete. This is unfortunate, because I doubt that another such genealogy of this vast and scattered group of relatives will ever be written again.

Within the past year I have corresponded with Marian McCort of Hammond, Indiana. She is a retired school teacher, and a great granddaughter of John Lawrence Myers Porter and Emily Domire, She descends through their
daughter Clarisa Ellen who marred Delorma Brown of Coldwater, Michigan in 1879. Their daughter, Alice Mae married a man named McCort, who was a dry goods mer¬ chant in Hammond, Indiana. Marian visited in our home near Cumberland, Maryland early last May, 1975-She told us her grandmother Clarissa Ellen worked as a
milliner in her father's store for 35 years, and was buried in the family grave¬ yard in Coldwater, Michigan.

Only one of Alice Mae Brown's children is listed in the genealogy. Marian was the only girl, but there were five boys. Yale Brown McCort is listed on page 77. The McCort brothers are all deceased.

Marian and her room mate Winifred Wirt visited the Porter graveyard while here. Then they went to the historic area of Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown and Charlottesville, Virginia. And finally to Lead Mine, where
Clarissa Ellen, her grandmother had been born. There she met some distanv cousins, and went to the little Methodist cemetery and found the graves of Frederick and Mary Ann Loughrie Domire, the parents of Emily, who was wife of John Lawrence Myers Porter.

It is most unfortunate that Marian and all her brothers are not listed as a family in the genealogy. But when a family as old and scattered as John Porter's has become, it is difficult to account for all descendants.

John Porter died in Preston County two years before the big migration to Michigan. Records say he was buried in Texas Cemetery. This leads me to wonder why he was not buried beside his wife Hannah, of whom it is recorded
was buried in Mt. Carmel at Aurora, a distance of only about five miles. But that is snow country, and he died Feb. 14, 1862. It could have been that huge snowdrifts made it impossible to travel that distance to bury him beside his
wife. I have known of such conditions near here, and we don't have the kind of snows they have in Preston County.

I have never met any of John Porter's family who moved to Michigan except Marian. I did carry on a correspondence with Aden Clary Porter's son George L. Porter for a few years before his death. I still have the genealogy he had his granddaughter type for me. He also sent me a nice photograph of himself, his five brothers and their sister Ida, that was taken in 1935. I also have all the nice letters he wrote to me.

While I was still a small boy, my father met George L. Porter, who was visiting some of his relatives here in Maryland and West Virginia. Father spoke often of meeting one of his cousins from Blissfield, Michigan after that, and for the next twenty years we received an invitation written on a post card, to attend the Porter Reunion, that was held annually in August.

We lived on the farm then and could never arrange to attend. George L. Porter died in 1939.

I also have many letters from Samuel Doak Porter who compiled the Porter Genealogy. Our correspondence began when he was seeking information on the Porters here in Maryland. He spoke once of coming down and spending a
few days with me in old graveyards, searching for dates and names on tombstones, hoping to verify and add to the records he had. He also spoke of stopping in to see us as he and his wife came through here on his way to and from Florida every year. But something seemed to always come up that prevented his doing it. And I was very sorry to learn of his sudden passing in 1966, just before his
genealogy was ready for the printers. His wife and daughter Elinor Muhl finished his work and got the book ready for circulation.

I am sure that if Samuel and I had ever met, we would have become fast inends as well as distant cousins.

Samuel was a Great grandson of John, the same as I am a great grandson of Squire Mike. John was an older brother to Squire Mike, and both of them were sons of the first Samuel.

There are still many remnants in the area of Horse Shoe Run of the descendants of John Porter. I travel in that area selling and servicing dairy farm equipment, and find people named Harsh, Wotring, Evans, Snyder, Roth and
many others who will tell me, "My great grandmother was a Porter. Nearly "every other person I meet there is a distant cousin to me. They are nearly all farmers, industrious, honest, hard working people, still farming the land that was 'cleared by their forefathers.
Josiah Porter... "Grandpap Si'

As anyone who has Samuel D. Porter's genealogy can note, Grandpap Si was the son of Gabriel Porter and Rebecca Frost. Gabriel was a brother of the Samuel, who was father of John, who was the father of the Michigan Porters. So we learn that John and Grandpap Si were first cousins.
All that I am writing about these early Porter ancestors comes form what Frank Porter wrote, and what I learned from my father. Gabriel had other sons and daughters, but I know of no account of their descendants such as was kept of Grandpap Si. Squire Mike and Grandpap Si were first cousins, and we shall learn that intermarriage of close relationship took place between some of their descendants.
Grandpap Si married first, Mary Margaret Combs, who became mother of his first nine children. His second wife, Sarah was a daughter of his first cousin, Souire Mike. Sarah, whom he married in 1836 bore him twelve children over the next twenty five.years...three of whom died in infancy. In total, Grandpap Si was father of 21 children.
Grandpap Si lived on a farm adjoining Rose Meadows which he rented from a mining company. It did not come into ownership of Porters until more than a century later when around 1930 three of his grandsons purchased it from the coal company that was selling their holdings in that area. Since then, Marshall Robert bought the shares of his brothers, and is now sole owner. He is nearly 80, and is still living there and farming the land.
Grandpap Si and his sons mined coal from under the farm, paying a
royalty to the coal company who owned the land. Much of that coal was hauled
to Cumberland in wagons. There it was loaded on rafts that were built on the
low tides of the Potomac River. The rafts were made from slim tree trunks,
bound together with cables and ropes to make a flat platform about 30 x 30 feet.
The coal was hauled to the river over the old National Pike by horse and ox teams, in wagons during summer, and sleds in winter. There it was loaded on the rafts whiFsei held around 50 tons. When the snow melted and spring rains came, the river
arose to near flood stage, and the raft was ready to be unleashed from its moor¬ ings. Then four to six young, strong, fearless men loaded provisions of food and clothing and bedding, climbed aboard vrith only long poles to guide the cargo down the swift, treacherous waters of the Potomac to Washington. If they de¬ livered the raft and coal intact to the destination, they received the money for it. Then they walked back to the farm near Frostburg, a distance of 150 miles.
But it wasn't always that easy.

I have heard my father say, and he knew only what he had heard from
Grandpap Si and others, that many times those rafts would flounder on rocks in the middle of the river when the water current would recede. The raftsmen would have to abandon their cargo, and wade ashore and walk home in wet clothing with no money for the coal. Also, there were many raft loads of coal that would be washed ashore on a gravel bar that could not be moved back into the current,
and had to be abandoned by the raftsmen. Then there were the rafts loaded with coal that would be torn apart by unseen rocks in the river. The coal would be lost, and the raftsmen barely escaping with their lives...and not all of them
escaped with their lives. Some of these raftsmen drowned in the swift current. Others died of exposure when they were forced into the icy water. If they
reached the shore, they didn't have a dry match to start a fire and they perished in their wet clothing.






Rafting could be done only under treacherous conditions, when the water was deep enough to carry the rafts above the rocky river bed.
The C&O canal, that ran from Cumberland, Md. to Georgetown, near Washington was completed and ready for transportation in 1850. That ended the rafting on
the Potomac. After that coal was hauled to Cumberland and loaded on canal boats.
Grandpap Si was a devoutly religious man, from all I have heard of him. Frank Porter spoke of him as "One of the few Saints of earth I have known." My father said he would not let one of his men nor horses work on Sunday nor Christmas. But that on New Years day, unless it fell on Sunday, he wanted
every man and team to be working... a sort of omen or superstition that, if he began the New Year making some money it Tfould be a prosperous year for him.

It seems apparent that Grandpap Si's children, 15 of whom were girls
married one by one until most of them were scattered and gone from the farm when his younger son M.M.T. (Doc.) Porter began taking over the management of
the farm that had been home of the large family. Grandpap Si died in 1880.
He is buried in the Porter graveyard, just up on the hill above the farm he spent his life on.

I can find no dates of the deaths of either of his wives, Mary Ellen Combs and Sarah Porter.



-10-
John Samuel Porter...My Grandfather
John S. Porter, son of Squire Mike and Elizabeth Devore was born 18
Play Place on Piney Mountain, the farm his grandfather Samuel bought from the
Anderson heirs. And lest I forget to mention it later in my story, I will say
that from that location on the mountain top is one of the finest panoramic views in Allegany County. Westward, almost all of the eastern slope of Savage Mountain is visible. Looking eastward, one sees a fold of mountain tops all the way to the Blue Ridge Range in Virginia, and far beyond. To the south west lies the beauti¬ ful north branch valley of the Potomac River. North east, one sees a hundred
hills and valleys lying fold on fold into Bedford County, Pennsylvania. The
mountains and valleys of four states may be seen from there on any clear day.
John S. and his brothers had worked to clear and greatly enlarge Play Place. John married Rebecca, oldest daughter of Grandpap Si. His second cousin.
Rebecca was another of whom Frank Porter wrote of as a "Saint of Earth." Her
five children, William, Josiah, Michael, Margaret and John Wesley, my father were all born in the log house that Samuel had built near a strong flowing spring of good mountain water.
John and his family lived with Squire Mike until the latter's death in 1877.
Thus, John's growing family had the influence of that old patriarch and philos¬ opher in their early environment. And that, with the guidance of a "Sainted mother," indoctrinated them with a kindness and gentleness rarely found in
individuals.
This is not to say that they would stand for abuse or exploitation. Th
could all stand up for their rights when it was necessary. But they we
courteous with all people regardless of high or low standing. They were mountain people, but had a refinement not often found in mountain people.

I never saw my grandfather John nor grandmother Rebecca, nor Uncle Will, Uncle Si nor Aunt Margaret. They all died before my time. I do have vivid recollections of Uncle Mike, of whom I shall write later.
John S. and his four sons made a good working team to operate the enlarged farm known as Play Place. The altitude of nearly 2500 feet was favorable for
growing potatoes in. the red shale soil. But the location of the place was a
lifetime of unhandiness for all who spent their lives there. It was three miles from Eckhart (all up hill). Three miles of (hard to maintain) mountain road that
had first been an animal trail and moccasin path, trod by Indians on their way to their hunting grounds that later became Play Place. The road washed out with
heavy rains and flash floods. It drifted with the snows of winter and isolated the people who lived there. But the family knew no other way of life and never thought of it as a hardship.
John S. never had good health. But he had knowledge and ability to manage that made him a good farmer. He knew his land, and would never abuse it by
overcropping. Long before soil conservation agencies came into being, he was
practicing what they came to advocate a half century later. He contoured his
hilly fields and strip cropped them so as i:o control erosion. His program of
crop rotation kept the soil in a state of high fertility for growing potatoes and other cash crops.
There were no machines to lighten the tasks of farmers in John's time.
The more than a hundred bushels of potatoes that were planted every year were
dropped by hand in the rows prepared with a wood beam shovel plow. Those potatoes



-11-

had to be cultivated and hoed at least three times, and the wood beam shovel plows x^ere used to cultivate. The younger boys fell heir to the heavy hoes that were made by local blacksmiths. And hoeing potatoes and corn was an all summer task for boys not big enough to handle a plow.

Then in the early 1380's came the first infestation of the Colorado Potato
Beetles. "Potato Bugs," they came to be called, and the growers knew nothing about them. But they soon learned that unless controlled, they would eat the leaves from the vines and destroy the crop.
Controlling potato bugs became another link in the chain of hard work that
went into growing the crop. My father told me that he and his brothers and other hired men would work for weeks on end holding a basin under the vines to catch the bugs when they slapped the vines with light paddles. The bugs were dumped into large pails that were filled with lime water, which killed them.

This would have been a huge, unpleasant task to go over every vine in a
ten acre field only once. But the bugs deposited eggs on the under sides of the leaves. And those eggs multiplied the bugs by a hundred to one when they hatched in nine days. So potato bugging became a month of extra work each summer to grow a potato crop, because once the potato beetles invaded a new territory they became an annual pest.
That was long before the times of mechanical spraying machines, which today could control the bugs on a ten acre field of potatos with chemicals in a
scant hour.

But no matter about all that hard work, John S. was almost certain to have
a good crop of potatoes to dig every year. And when time came for digging, there was another full month of hard work ahead. A strong man would take a heavy,
two horse wood beam plow and go over the center of the potato rows to plow them out of the ground. Numerous helpers would follow the men with the plows and pick the potatoes up in buckets and put them in sacks. Around mid-afternoon the plows were stopped, and all hands went to work loading the sacks on wagons and hauling them to a cave that held two thousand bushels. The cave kept the potatoes crisp, and prevented them from freezing during the severe winters they often had on
Piney Mountain.

Then after the potatoes were planted, cultivated, bugged, dug and stored in the cave, there was still the iob of grading and marketing them. The marketing was a job that, even though John S. was always ailing, he could do well. With sLiaw in the bottom of .he wagon bed to prevent freezing, the wagon was loaded
with sacks of potatoes and John would start at daybreak for the five mile trip
to Frostburg, or ten mile trip to Cumberland, to market his forty bushel load of potatoes.

There were no roads but dirt roads in those days, and such roads were either dusty, muddy or snowy, depending upon the weather. In winter, unless covered with snow the roads were likely frozen ruts.
All of us who live in what I will call "Comfort, and the lap of luxury" today could not even imagine what it was like to sit up on a wagon seat in cold, wintry weather and drive a team ten miles. With the loaded wagon, it took a full four hours to travel the ten miles to Cumberland. I know, because I did it a few
times as a big boy prior to 1921 when we got our first farm truck. All a heavily
dressed driver could do was get off and walk while driving the team when he got too cold. I know it was never a pleasant task for a man who was in poor health.



-12-

There were years, when the crop was short that potatoes sold for a doll
a bushel. But in years when the crop was big they sold for half dollar a bushel or less, and they were not in ready demand at that low pric
But John had his business built up. His customers knew that if they bought potatoes from him they could depend on the quality. He became known to his many friends and customers as "Potato John." Over the many, many years that he dealt with them, he knew every groceryman in Frostburg and Cumberland by their first names. John would invite them to come to his mountain farm for Sunday dinner, and many came. And patient Grandma welcomed them and prepared fine dinners for them.
As John's boys grew up they married. Uncle Will was near thirty when he married Mary Rase, a daughter of a German neighbor. Two daughters, Leota and Idella were born to them in the log house on Play Place. They lived in with Grandfather John and Grandmother Rebecca.

Uncle Si married Lizzie Rase, a sister to Uncle Will's wife. They went
housekeeping in a small log house on the farm that had stood vacant for many
years. Within eleven years they had Cecelia, Sophia and Gilbert, in that order.

And during that period, Uncle Mike married Lizzie Engle. Uncle Mike rented a small company farm not far from the Porter graveyard. They had two daughters, Miranda and Geneva.

Aunt Margaret, "Maggie" never married. She just stayed at home and helped Grandma. My father was still a young man then. Somehow, those Porters could live agreeably with two or three families in one house.
Forest fires were another frightful hazard on that mountain-top farm. The dense mountain laurel and other underbrush that grew up after a fire, made fuel for another almost every dry spring or autumn. It was almost a known fact that the fires were set deliberately to make huckleberries grow, since the vines
grew profusely on land that fire had burned over. There was no forest service, nor penalties for setting fires in those days. But the fires that swept up
the mountain from all directions often burned for weeks and trying to keep them under control kept the men from digging potatoes and husking corn and getting their fall work done. And fighting forest fires was hard, payless work.

There was always the danger of the fire getting close to the farm yard and burning the buildings. Also, all the fences were made of rails then, and when a rail fence burned it took much work at spring planting time to rebuild it.
It was during one of those terrible fires that Maggie became so frightened she never recovered from the effects of it. She believed the fire was still
burning near the house and barn long after it had been extinguished. Her eyes became starey. She would leave her work in the house and steal off in the woods behind the barn and get herself lost. Her brothers would have to hunt for hours to find her. But she would run off again at the first opportunity. Her mind deteriorated rapidly. She soon became so despondent she paid no attention to anything nor anyone.

She had always been so companionable with Grandma, but then she no longer noticed her. Squire Mike had died some years before, and Maggie had been given his room, just as he had left it with books, manuscripts, business papers and documents all in the corner cupboard. She began spending all her time in that room. She would be up and standing at the east window to watch the sun come up over the mountain, and stand there staring at it until it went out of sight over the house-top. Then in the afternoons she would go to the west window and



-13-

stare at the sun until it sank and set behind the western ridges. When the cold weather of fall came , Grandma would build a log fire in the open fireplace to
make the room comfortable. Maggie would not notice that she was in the room.
But then, one day Grandma noticed that the corner cupboard door was open and that all of Squire Mike's papers were gone. Maggie had burned them in the open
fireplace. Nothing was left but his Bible. (We have that bible in our home.)

Maggie lived only a few months longer and just wasted away to death.
Her passing, and under those conditions was a great sorrow to Grandma. And by that time Grandfather John had become an invalid. He had grown heavy from a
diabetic condition. He became so big they had to get an extra large chair with wide arm rests to comfort his swollen arms. As his illness progressed, he began losing use of his fingers and toes a joint at a time over a period of two years, and then became helpless. His sons carried him from bed to chair, and from
chair to the table until he died in1884.He was56.
A nice new dwelling was under construction during the latter period of John's illness, but he died before it was ready to move into.





Rebecca... "Grandma Porter," Oldest daughter of Grandpap Si.

As anyone who follows the line of descendants in the Porter genealogy can note, Rebecca and Squire Mike were second cousins, though she was a daughter of Mary Margaret Combs, Grandpap Si's first wife. She was four years older than John S., my Grandfather. I can describe her only from recollection of what
Frank wrote of her, and from what my Father, Uncle Mike and the daughters of Uncle Will, and Uncle Si, who grew up very near her told me. From this, I have the impression that she was the very soul of kindness, gentleness and a feeling of love and understanding for all of God's creatures.

To quote what Frank Porter wrote of her, "Aunt Becky was small and petite.
Never young, yet never old. Plain to homeliness, but lovely as an angel. Her
inner goodness and gentleness shone through her physical shape and glorified it."

Her life was always hard but she knew no other, and she never complaine
It had fallen her lot in life to do and care for many people, young and old.
She had cared for Squire Mike in his blind and ailing years. She had the sorrow of caring for her only and beloved daughter, Maggie, with whom she had lost
contact in her young life through mental illness.

She had the care of Grandfather John in the latter part of his comparatively young life. But she lived life as it was to be doled out to her. She never
became bitter and gave way to self-pity, as we can see she might have done. Those qualities of sterling character, she had inherited from the early Porters she
descended from, and she stamped them indellibly upon the characters and dispos¬ itions of her offspring. Yes, and almost everyone she came in contact with.

The farm on Piney Mountain in Grandma's time was for many years a sort
of haven for outcasts. Old bachelors, of which there were always two or three
made the place their home. They had come when they were younger and able to
work. They stayed until they were old and disabled. They were never turned away. If they needed the services of the family doctor, Porters paid for it. If they died there, and several did, Porters paid for a respectable burial...though
there was, at that time a County fund for the purpose.


- u -
And in addition to this, Grandma Porter took two orphaned nieces, Ida and Matilda Sharp, daughters of her sister Katherine to raise to young womanhood, and marriage. The old log house on Play Place was never large, yet somehow Grandma found food and shelter for many people.
Even though the land was steep, rocky and hard to work, there was always
abundant food, and such a houseful of residents, visitors and star-boarders
consumed huge quantities of it. Some winters they butchered a dozen big hogs, and likely two beeves. They butchered a lamb or mutton from the sheep flock as the need or choice of meats arose. The garden was big, and furnished all the
needed vegetables, the cellar was filled with potatoes, cabbage and other
vegetables for winter. The cellar shelves x?ere loaded with fruits and vegetables of summer canning. And this was endless toil for Grandma, who did all the
canning on a wood stove, in which, just to keep a good fire going was an almost endless task in itself.
The school at Eckhart where Grandma's children attended was a three mile walk across fields and over wood paths. Frank, who was two years younger than my father stated that he couldn't go to school until he was twelve. He was too fat to stand the walk.
The nearest church was also three miles distance. Yet all the sons of John and Rebecca had attended Sunday School and church regularly enough in youth to instill the custom of attending church all their adult lives. And in turn,
instilling the custom of regular church going into their own children.
All during my early and middle life my father spoke frequently of "Mother", as he called Grandma. One saying of Grandma's that he repeated countless times was, "If you can't say something good about a person, don't say anything." My father lived religiously to that admonition. When gossip or villification was being indulged in by others, he simply remained silent, no matter how much the criticism or berating was deserved. He retained that practice to the end of
his life, even though on many occasions, he would have been justified in return¬ ing evil for evil.

I have inherited and acquired many traits of characteristics from my father through the years of living and working side by side with him, and I wish I
could have acquired complete control of my thoughts by remaining silent. But I have never been able to do that as he did.

Grandma Porter had little besides necessities of life...surely no luxuries.
Yet she lived a noble, useful life of service to others with a peaceful mind until March of 1900. On the tombstone in Porter graveyard that marks the resting
place of John S. Porter, Margaret Porter is inscribed "Rebecca Porter" Born 1824...Died 1900. "She lived for others. Servant of God, Well done."

I never learned who composed that epitaph, but assume it was someone who knew and loved her... But who could it have been? It was said that "Everyone who knew her loved her."



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William Ward Porter...Oldest Son of John S. and Rebecca Porter
All that I know of Uncle Will is what my father and Uncle Mike told me.
Frank Porter wrote that "Cousin Will came as near being a genius as any Porter I ever knew."
Uncle Will had likely done heavy farm work in his early years, but from
what my father told me, he became a sort of overseer and manager of the farming operations at Play Place. He had many talents, and was a perfectionist in
everything he did or had supervision over. He had a shop in which he d
blacksmith and wood work. He could repair wagons, shoe horses, make wood beam plows, grain cradles and rakes, and handles for axes, picks, maddocks, hoes and his work had a factory finish appearance. He could also do small artistic
wood work making stands and chairs and cupboards for relatives and friends.
And he made them free of charge. Just from his own mind, he tr.£de unique clock cases with his own designs, such as no one had seen before.
When I was a small boy, we had a carving he had done of a boy on a ladder picking cherries, and a bird was above him eating the biggest cherries. It
was very lifelike, but delicate and fragile. It got broken when it fell on the floor when someone tried to remove it from the wall while some papering of the Trails was being done. The glued pieces came apart, and it was never put together again.

Uncle Will could draw a likeness of any face or object with charcoal on a clean, smooth board, and did such drawings of many friends who requested it. He was a beautiful penman, and wrote with goose quill pens and ink made from poke-berry juice and lamp black.
He could do excellent work with stone, building foundations and stone fences. He would not plant a crop in a field until it was perfectly prepared by
harrowing and cross-harrowing to break up all clods and smooth out all ridges
left by the plow.
It was said that Uncle Will was a good sized, muscular man, of much finer and more even facial features than most of the other Porters. But his health was never good. He suffered from stomach ulcers, and doctors had no good
remedies to treat ulcers in those days. He got the most relief during ulcer activity from drinking cream, which he nearly always had a craving for. His doctor asked permission to perform an autopsy after his death. Permission was given, and the doctor told his wife it was the biggest ulcer he had ever seen, and wondered that he had lived so long with it. He was only 47 years old.
Uncle Will and Aunt Mary and their daughter, Leota and Idella lived in
with Grandfather John and Grandma Rebecca. Long years after, I heard my father say, "Mary was always good to mother."




-16-
Josiah, "Si" Porter... Second son of John S. and Rebecca Porter.

I must say of Uncle Si, I have no recollection of him. He married Lizzie
Rase, a sister of Uncle Will's wife Mary. They went housekeeping in the old log house that was vacated after the family moved into the new house. From what I have heard, Uncle Si was a much smaller man than Uncle Will, but he was re¬
nounced as the fastest worker in all the area. It was said that he almost ran at his work, and unless the work Was too heavy for his size, he would do as much as any two men who worked with him.
Those were the days of making hay with a mowing scythe and raking it with a hand rake. It was also the days of harvesting grain with a cradle and raking it into sheaves and tying them with bands made of the grain straw. Uncle Si
was too small to stand up to a twelve hour day cradling grain because it was
very heavy work. But at raking and tying the grain into sheaves, he could follow the best of cradlers, a task that it took two men to do. Long years after Uncle Si died, I heard old men say, "He was the only man in the area who could take up grain after a good cradler."
Two daughters and a son were born to Uncle Si and Aunt Lizzie up to the year 1890, Cecelia, Sophia and Gilbert, in that order. The two girls grew to young womanhood at Play Place. Gilbert was younger.
It was always a financial strain for so many families to live from the
meager and dwindling income from the hilly farm. So, Uncle Si, being known
for the amount of work he could do was much in demand to help neighboring farmers at harvesting and butchering. The wages were a dollar a day. And at harvesting a day was from sunrise to sunset. A day at butchering was from long before day¬ light to midnight in many cases when they tried to finish the job in one day.
But the outside income helped support the growing family, and Uncle Si was
one of whom it was said, "No matter how small the wages, Si would save a little." Most likely his frugal wife was a great help.
I have heard it said many times that "The honeymoon lasted all their short
life together for Si and Lizzie," which could hardly have been more than twenty
years. They never had any words but kind words for each other and their children.
Uncle Si didn't have robust health either. His small body couldn't stand
up to the pace his inner drive demanded of it. With his resistance low from the summer work, he would catch colds during winter, and usually pneumonia would
follow. This happened winter after winter, and each siege would leave him a
little weaker for the hard summer work of planting and harvesting. But he simply could not slacken the pace of running at his work. He said that to work at a
slower gait tired him out. Many years later, his cousin Frank Porter who knew him so well wrote of him, "What a pity that Si had to try to do sixty years work in thirty years and leave his family when he was only 44-
His fifth or sixth bout with pneumonia killed him in January of 1900.

Uncle Si's daughter Cecelia married Walter Engle, a butcher, and lived on a large farm at Eckhart. They had one son,Lester. Cecelia died in I960, aged around 80. Her son Lester worked all his life as a meat dealer with his father. Lester retired a few years ago, and moved to Florida. He died there on December 13, 1975. Aged 72. His body was brought back to Eckhart for burial.




-17-
Sophia, Uncle Si's second daughter married Herbert Griffith around1905.
She had three sons, Gilbert, Herbert and Homer. Homer died of cancer at45.
Herbert and Gilbert are still living.

Sophia has long been a widow. She has been in Cumberland Nursing Home
for the past three years. I go to visit her frequently. She is very frail,
almost totally deaf at93.I can hardly read of another Porter who lived
that long.*

Gilbert, Uncle Si's only son married Gladys Sleeman around1919.They
ran a dairy farm on old Frog Hollow Road, which was the road that led from
Eckhart to Play Place farm on Piney Mountain. Sometime in the middle 1920's,
Gilbert bought the old log house in which he had been born at Play Plac
He tore it down and moved it to his farm and rebuilt it for use as a machine shed.

Gilbert died in November of 1935. He and Gladys had no children.





Michael R. Porter... Third son of John S. and Rebecca Porter.
Uncle Mike was the only one of my father's brothers I ever knew. He was a short, thick bodied man that could be called "roly-poly". He had unusual
strength and athletic skill. In his young manhood, he would wrestle with any man, regardless of size, who challenged him, and rarely if ever did he lose
in the match. He was never known to pick or start a fight, but he was never known to run or back down from a bully who went looking for a fight. In those days, any man who had won the reputation of whipping a number of bullies had to defend himself frequently because there was a bully or two in every small town or community. The urge to get into fights was always more prevalent when the men were drinking, and drinking was an evil in those days as it is in these days. But such bullies never picked a second fight with Uncle Mike.
It could be said of Uncle Mike that he didn't have the qualities of refine¬ ment that his brothers had. But the charactertistic of treating everyone with respect, he had. Everyone liked him, even those he had to throw or whip. He never held a spite or grudge against anyone.

When Uncle Mike married Aunt Lizzie, he left the Piney Mountain farm and rented a Company farm near the Porter Graveyard. He was a good farmer, and prospered in a small way.

Aunt Lizzie was a good housekeeper and a good helpmate. Both of their
daughters, Miranda and Geneva were pretty well grown up when I was a small boy. But it was around the time the girls were becoming young ladies and going out to parties and square dances that Aunt Lizzie began going out with them. Uncle Mike didn't like that, and when he objected to it they all turned against him and continued going out, and Uncle Mike began drinking, which in turn made more to cause disagreement.

Miranda, the oldest daughter got married around that time, and before long Geneva got married. Aunt Lizzie left and went to live with her daughters. Then Uncle Mike sold his livestock and equipment, and came down on our farm and lived with us that winter. But he drank a lot, hoping to drown his sorrow and
troubles. I was hardly six years old then but I remember it well.




-18-

The next spring Uncle Mike divided the money he got from his sale, half and half with Aunt Lizzie. Then he bought a house in Eckhart and lived alone. He worked at odd jobs. He was a fair veterinary, or stock doctor for having had no schooling in the profession, and at that time almost everyone in Eckhart kept a cow or two and many kept a horse. And when an animal got sick, Uncle Mike was called to doctor them. He made a good living, but he continued drinking. On his visits he often told us "It ain't a home. It's just a place to stay."
He and Aunt L'zzie never went back to live together, and within just a few years, she died. I still remember how he cried when he came to our home on a snowy day ond told us about Aunt Lizzie's death. There were no telephones then, and the only way to get messages abroad was to carry the

Over the years after that, Uncle Mike often came on Saturday evenings a
spent week ends in our home. He and my father would talk for hours on end about their young life on the Piney Mountain farm. How I have wished since that I had taken notes of their conversations. I would have had a much longer and more
interesting story about the Maryland Porters.

While I was growing up, I often worked in the fields with Uncle Mike when he would come almost every spring to help with the planting. And in the fall when he would come and help with the apple picking, grain seeding and corn husking.
He was always agreeable, and had a lot of paf'ence with children. Like Uncle
Will, he was handy in a shop, but never did such fine finished work. He
continued to drink some.

Then the time came that perhaps because of having no where else to live,
his daughter Geneva, her husband and their four small children moved in with him. Geneva had never had a very pleasant life because her husband was addicted to
drinking. And during his drinking spells he was mean to his family... so mean in fact that a few years later, Uncle Mike bought another house near by, and
after giving his son-in-law a good thrashing, left Geneva and her family in his house and moved into the other and lived alone again.

He continued working at odd jobs and stock doctoring, and spent most of
his earnings to support Geneva and her children when her husband got on a drinking spell.

Geneva s husband was a good worker, and a good provider when he was sober,
and he would stay sober for months at a time. But when he went back to drinking, he would come home and run his wife and children out of the house, and they
would have no money to live on until the next pay day. On these occasions, the family would move in with Uncle Mike again until the drunk was over.

Geneva and her first four children lived under such conditions for several years. Then on the Saturday night before Easter of 1917, her husband came home
drunk and ran the family out and went to bed. The family went up to Uncle Mike's to spend the rest of the night. No one ever knew for certain how it happened, but supposed that the drunken man went to bed smoking a cigarette and went to
sleep. The house burned to the foundation that night, and the drunk's body was burned beyond recognition. He left his widow and four children without a penny for support.

Uncle Mike became a totally changed man. It was during the work boom of
World War I. He got a job on the Eckhart branch railroad maintaining track for the coal boom that followed. He took it upon himself to support Geneva and
her children whom he loved dearly. On one of his many Sunday visits with his newly acquired family to our home, he told us, "I have wondered a thousand times



-19-
why I have been left here to waste my life away, but now I know. I was left to support these children." He became religious, and never drank after that.
After a few years, Geneva married again... a man much younger than herself. For a number of years the new husband seemed industrious and a good family man. Four more children were born. It seemed he was accident prone, because he was seriously injured in mine and automobile accidents several times. And in time, he began drinking. He was never as mean as the first husband, but no drinking man is pleasant to live with.
Uncle Mike always had a housekeeper, (of sorts) and never went back living
alone after that. The older and younger children were a joy to him. He loved
them, and they loved him. But his life was never as pleasant as one who had not had that much family trouble.

Geneva's health began to fail, and she died when her youngest child was quite small. By that time the older children from the first marriage were
growing up. Loretta, who was around fifteen took over as housekeeper and care of the younger children. The older boys found work, and the family stayed
together, the second husband staying with them.

After several heart attacks, and frequent spells of illness, Uncle Mike, who despite his strength, had, like his brothers, been an ailer all his life
died in November of1928.He was72.He is buried in Porter Graveyard.
Geneva's children scattered after they grew up. Most of them married well, and several of them hold good positions in the new areas of which they located.
After the children were grown and left home one by one, the second husband
became a drifter. He went from job to job, and got himself drowned while drinking with a gang of cronies while on a fishing trip.



"NOTE: Since I began writing this, Sophia has passed away, May1976.There are
but two of the descendants of Squire Mike's son, John, still living, my sister
Pearl and I.



-20-
John Wesley Porter
My Father
1863...1947
Youngest son of John S. and Rebecca Porter
Grandma Rebecca was 3C when my father was born, and that was nearly pa
time of giving birth by women who had worked so hard in those days. Grandma
came down with a condition called "Milk leg" after giving birth, and when that was cured she haH a runn'.ng sore on her leg from a ruptured vein to the end of her life.

But a new baby in the house after Uncle Mike was seven years old was a ioy to everyone. He grew up with aging parents and older brothers and a sister who loved him dearly.

As did all boys and girls in those days, he began working at light tasks as soon as he was big enough to do them. And on that farm he was soon big enough to hoe corn and potatoes and bug potatoes and pick them up after they were plowed out. The result was that he grew to manhood with a slight hump on his back from long days of stooping work in the potato fields.

Like Uncle Si, he never got very big. He was about five feet, seven inches tall, and hardly ever weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds. I have heard many people say, "Wes and Si looked a lot alike."
He stayed on Piney Mountain farm and worked willingly at any task h's
older brothers gave him. Being the youngest, he depended upon their judgment and management, never taking any part in management himself. As a result, he never learned to do much thinking or management on hi

John married Elizabeth Jeffries on 18 Jun 1924. Elizabeth (daughter of Thomas Jeffries and Mary Sittig) died in UNKNOWN. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

John Wesley Porter, 84, Route 5, Winchester Road, died this morning in Allegany Hospital where he was admitted Wednesday. He had been ill a short time. Mr. Porter was born in Maryland, a son of the late John S. and Rebecca Porter. He belonged to Cresaptown Methodist Church and the Woodmen of the World. Surviving are two daughters, Mrs. Trubadour Lewis, Route 5, and Mrs. Walter Yoder, McMullen Highway; a son, Marshall Porter, Route 5, and 12 grandchildren. The body was removed to the Hafer Funeral Home in Frostburg. The Cumberland Evening Times, November 21, 1947

John Wesley PORTER and Rosa Anna TRESCHER were married in Sep 1895 in Allegany Co., Maryland


The following excerpt is from John Marshall Porter's "Sketches of Maryland Porters", circa 1976. Scott Carter Williams brought it to the attenetion of Michael A. McKenzie in 2018.

John Wesley Porter My Father
1863...1947
Youngest son of John S. and Rebecca Porter

Grandma Rebecca was 39 when my father was born, and that was nearly past time of giving birth by women who had worked so hard in those days. Grandma came down with a condition called "Milk leg" after giving birth, and when that was cured she haH a runn'.ng sore on her leg from a ruptured vein to the end of her life.

But a new baby in the house after Uncle Mike was seven years old was a ioy to everyone. He grew up with aging parents and older brothers and a sister who loved him dearly.

As did all boys and girls in those days, he began working at light tasks as soon as he was big enough to do them. And on that farm he was soon big enough to hoe corn and potatoes and bug potatoes and pick them up after they were plowed out. The result was that he grew to manhood with a slight hump on his back from long days of stooping work in the potato fields.

Like Uncle Si, he never got very big. He was about five feet, seven inches tall, and hardly ever weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds. I have heard many people say, "Wes and Si looked a lot alike."

He stayed on Piney Mountain farm and worked willingly at any task his older brothers gave him. Being the youngest, he depended upon their judgment and management, never taking any part in management himself. As a result, he never learned to do much thinking or management on his own. This made of him a man almost afraid to trust his own judgment in farm management and business matters.

When he was 33, he married Rosa Anna Trescher, who was 7 years younger than himself, and left Piney Mountain farm. He and my mother took over the operation of the Trescher farm near Cresaptown. The aging parents of his wife were past their youth and ability to continue farming, and had wanted to unburden themselves of the farm for years. Their daughter had married a farmer. This was their opportunity.

That was in September of 1895. The following November of 1896 my sister Bertie was born. Then in September of 1898 I was born.

When my father left Piney Mountain farm, both Uncle Will and Uncle Si were ailing. And for the next several years, in addition to doing his own planting and harvesting, he would take his teams and implements and hired men over the six dirt road miles to Piney Mountain and help his brothers do their planting and harvesting.

Then in January of 1900, Uncle Si died of pneumonia. Grandma Rebecca died in March of the same year, and the following August Uncle Will died. Before that winter, the widows of Uncle Si and Uncle Will moved their children to Eckhart and did the best they could to support them.

Aunt Mary opened a small store, and kept boarders. Uncle Si had always been able to save a little money, and Aunt Lizzie was able to manage to get along, by the hardest.

The widows had received the money from sale of the livestock and machinery Uncle Will and Uncle Si had accumulated. But after a century and a half of Porter ownership and operation of the Piney Mountain farm, no
Porter ever lived there again. The Porters had loved and cherished and taken pride in the rocky, hilly acres that had rewarded four generations of them with, if not riches, an abundant living.

My father and Uncle Mike bought the farm, which had been owned by Grandma Rebecca, and was to be divided equally between her four sons at her death. When it was offered for sale at public auction, no bid reached
$1200.00. That was what my father and Uncle Mike paid for it. The location and terrain didn't appeal to many men who wanted to buy a farm.

There was less than $300.00 each for the widows and two surviving sons after the cost of selling was paid. Uncle Mike and my father rented the farm to first one man and then another for a few years, and eventually sold it for exactly what they paid for it.

It changed hands several times after that, and the land grew poorer and fields grew over with brush. It seemed that no one but Porters could make the old fields blossom and yield their harvest...perhaps because no one ever cared for the place like the Porters had.

The nice new six room house that was finished and occupied scon after Grandfather died had stood all those years since, (91) to be exact, and then burned in the spring of 1975.

The lilac bush still blossoms every spring, and the old fashioned roses and yard flowers that Grandma Rebecca planted still bloom in season, but one must know where they are to find them because the forest has now grown back over the land that was once "Play Place."

To this time in my story I have written only from hear-say and what my father and others told me. Now I shall write from memory.

Until I was half grown I called my father "Papa." After that I began calling him "Dad," and I shall use that term in my writing from here on. My earliest recollections go back to June 1903 when my youngest sister Pearl was born. I was four and a half years old, and my older sister Bertie was seven. We were in our two acre black raspberry patch along with several other half grown youngsters of the neighborhood picking berrie3 for market. The farm that Dad moved to from Piney Mountain was not good potato land, so he had turned to growing raspberries as one of his income crops.

When I picked berries then I picked rrom the low branches of the bushes that Dad picked from and he picked from the higher branches. As all who read my story will note, the companionship that grew between Dad and me, and lasted to the end of his life began very early.

Our old family doctor drove into our yard that morning before we went to the berry field, and from where we were working I could see his horse and buggy for what, in my young mind I thought was a long time. Dad left the
berry field and went to the house for several short periods, and then he would return to pick berries. I thought he acted excited, but had no idea that a baby was expected. Parents of those days never spoke of mother's pregnancies. We were told--if we were told anything about new babies when we became curious and asked where babies came from that "The Doctors brought them."

When we all went to the house for dinner that day, the neighborhood mid-wife told me, "Marshall you won't be the baby any longer. You have a baby sister."

From that age on I had small tasks to do around the farm. Before I was half as tall as my hoe handle, I was with Dad and helping to hoe all the cultivated crops. Dad was of the old farmers who believed that to grow good crops, every weed had to be taken from around the young growing plants. And he would stand for no 'sloppy' use of the hoe. He patiently showed me how to use a hoe effectively. "Stand wide legged and bend over and put your weight on the handle. You'll do better hoeing, and you won't tire so quickly," he showed and told me.
"The way you learn to work now is the way you will work when you grow up."

He was right, because if I hoe in the garden now yet, I can only do it the way he taught me.

By early July, most of the hoeing was over, and the wheat and rye harvesting was at hand. And I was small, but big enough to learn to rake grain after it was cut with the cradle. Here again, Dad had only one way of raking. He taught me how to rake the swaths in uniform sheaves that he tied with the grain straw, making them into neat bundles as if they were to be entered in a contest for perfection. He showed me how to rake so there was no grain left on the field. It's always easier to do your work right," he often told me.


Then when I gathered the sheaves, one at a time, because I was too small to carry two, he showed me how to stand them up in groups of 12 to make a shock. Then he would break the heads of a sheaf apart to make a 'cover cap' as he called it to shelter the shock to turn rain until the grain was ready to be hauled in to the barn for threashing.

He was simply working as his father and older brothers had taught him, and was passing his training on to me. From him, I learned the same Porter traits and customs and methods of raising and saving crops on hilly farms. And I practiced them all the years I farmed afterward.

I could still cradle grain and rake and tie it into beautiful sheaves the way I learned it sixty five years ago. There are few men left in our county who could do that, and I am not boasting about my abilities...simply making a point of 'As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.'

By the time I was eight years old it became my daily summer chore to drive the cows to a hilly mountain pasture a mile away every morning, and to drive them home for milking every evening. If I encountered a copperhead or rattle¬ snake along the way, which I did numerous times every summer, I used stones or a club and killed it. I nearly always cut the rattles off a rattlesnake's tail and brought them home. I believed that as many rattles as a snake had, that was how old it was. If a snake had ten rattles it was ten years old. At one time I had nearly a pint fruit jar full of rattles I had taken from the rattlesnakes I killed after several summers driving cows.

It would have been useless for me to have been afraid of snakes then. It could have been debated whether we were in the snake's territory, or they were in ours. We were both in the same locality and we killed them when we came in contact with them.

From earliest childhood we had been warned to "Watch for snakes," by our parents, and we were ever conscious of our likelihood of encountering them. We simply watched the ground at all times in warm weather. And although I came in close contact with the woods camoflaged copperheads and timber rattlesnakes countless times I was never bitten by one of them. In fact, the only Porter of our long ancestry I ever heard of being bitten was Squire Mike's wife, Elizabeth Devore of whom I read, "She died of snake bite."

Yet, many times while I was growing up I heard Dad say "There's not nearly as many snakes as there used to be."

Before I was ten years old, Dad began letting me drive trusty horses on the County roads. I would take my mother or visitors to and from the street car at the Six Mile House, a distance of two miles. I also took grain to the mill for grinding in the spring wagon, a distance of three miles when I was too small to lift the sacks of grain on and off the wagon. The old miller did that for me.

True to Porter tradition, Dad was a good horseman, and he was good to horses, In fact, I often thought he gave more consideration to his horses than he did to himself. In many cases, if he had to make a trip of a mile or two to see a
neighbor on business, if the horses had worked all day he would walk rather than drive or ride one of the horses. He too, had worked all day.

Dad would never go to bed at night without lighting the lantern and going out to the barn to be sure that the horses and cattle were all right. And countless times over the years he found a horse or cow sick. Then he would have me go along to the barn to hold the lantern while he gave them doses of medicine every hour. Sometimes it was three o'clock in the morning when the sick animal would seem well enough for us to go to bed. And sometimes a sick horse or cow died.

Though Dad was always up before daylight and worked until after dark, it always seemed to me, even when I was only a half grown boy that his limited strength and endurance was being overworked. When we worked together in the fields he would have to rest frequently, but not for long periods. As he rested, he was restless; as if some inner drive or impulse was telling him "There's work to be done," would not let him feel free to rest. And soon, he Would be plodding along again.

Already, I had begun to note that he seemed to be always tired, and I fell into the custom of never letting him make a step that I could save for him. A custom I continued to the end of his rather long life.

Though neither Dad nor my mother had very good health, my strength and endurance seemed almost endless then, and has remained the same to this time in my life.

Mother had frequently mentioned to me that Dad would likely be short-lived like his father and two brothers and his sister, who had died young. She had heard it said that it was an inherited weakness of that branch of the Porters because of intermarriage of close cousins. Also, before I was born, a doctor who had attended Dad through a severe siege of what was called "Grippe"...we call it (flu) now, confided in Mother's sister and said, "Wesley Porter will not live to see the leaves come out this spring." Yet, Dad lived thirty years after that doctor died.

But hearing Mother say such things had a profound effect on my young mind. I couldn't remember when I hadn't dearly loved my Dad; not that I didn't love my Mother equally as much. It was just that a father and his only son's compan¬ ionship had grown between us. If he was away and was late coming, I worried about him. Remembering back now, it seems I was concerned about him any time he was out of sight. I silently imagined myself having to take over as head of the family, though I was hardly half grown. I knew one or two other boys who had to do that.

We nearly always kept a hired man, sometimes two in busy seasons. But they came and went as notions hit them. Some were good men. Others were trifling and hardly worth having on the place. They would leave or fail to come to work in busy seasons, and that was a worry on Dad. He would try to work harder to plant or save the crops.

In all my early years Dad tried to make me see that if I got a good education, I could make my living easier than he had. But my other love, next to what I felt for my parents was my love for that old hilly farm that was my birthplace.
And as I sat in the one room school (the only school I ever attended), my mind was back there in the fields where I knew Dad was slowly and tiredly toiling alone, while I was sitting in school when I could have been helping him. The work didn't make me tired.

By the time I was 15, and not big for my age, I did all the plowing. Dad wouldn't let me miss school except in the busiest seasons. But I worked after school, on Saturdays and holidays. By that time, I wouldn't start going to school until November, when most of the fall crops were in. Then I would quit school in March when it was time to begin getting ready for spring planting. Then the year I was 16, I went from November to March through the eighth grade
a second time. That was the end of my attending school.

Dad and Mother seemed to think they had failed me, and regretted that I didn't get more schooling. Yet, I had no preparation for high school, even if there had been one near enough to attend, (which there wasn't). Neither did
they have the means to pay for more schooling if I had chosen to pursue higher education.

I saw to it that Dad got any easy job that was to be done after that, and he was nearly always in the fields where there was work to be done. He could ride to mow and rake the hay. And crating fruit and vegetables was light,
easy work for him. My taking the lead and going ahead with the work seemed to relieve him of a burden, and before long he didn't look so tired as he always had when he was managing the work and taking the lead as he did in earlier years.

But we needed so many things on the farm to run it full scale as I had in mind. And Dad was terribly afraid of debt. He would never obligate himself with more borrowing money than he felt certain we could pay back with the fruit and vegetable crops every fall. But then, I worked in timber cutting mine posts during the winters, and we slowly but surely began to make progress in getting better and younger horses and newer and better farming implements.

I didn't expect any wages because there wouldn't have been any if I had expected them. I was content with a little spending money on the few occasions I went for social events and recreations. That was the life I had chosen, and I had endurance, ambition and confidence that if I worked hard enough, I could surely make a success of it.

Although I had never been a good scholar, mainly I believe because I didn't
like school for reasons I mentioned before. I always did my work and made passing grades, (such as grades went in a one room school.) But that didn't mean I was averse to learning and knowledge. I loved reading, and spent almost all my spare moments reading everything I thought would broaden my vision and mind. Then when my younger sister Pearl entered high school in 1918, I made more use of the books she brought home than she did, and frequently wrote poems and themes and book reports for her.

It must have been somewhere around that time that I formed the idea that since I could read, and liked to read, and there were books on almost any subject, I could be selective and teach myself anything I felt would be useful to me. And that is the course I have followed all through my adult life.

Happenings over the more than half century since that time could run into several full sized books, that will never be written because they would interest very few people. So from here I will relate sketchily and briefly to that period of time.

In June of 1924, I married Elizabeth Jeffries, only daughter of Thomas and Mary Sittig Jeffries of Frostburg after a three year courtship. Elizabeth was a pianoist and music teacher. She had never spent a night of her life on a farm
before we returned from our brief honeymoon in Shenandoah Valley. Then following the pattern of a number of our Porter ancestors, we made our home in the eight room farmhouse living in with Mother and Dad. Also, at that time, my oldest sister and her family lived there. There were three women in the kitchen then for a few years. But we got along very well...better than most such cases, I will say.

My sister moved into her new home in November of1927, and that same fall Mother had a stroke that left her a semi-invalid until August of 1932 when she passed away. Mother's health had never been good, and such a condition often strains the patience of the most amiable of men. Yet, over the thirty seven years of life with my ailing mother, Dad's disposition never changed. He believed or hoped and likely prayed that some doctor, some medicine or some miracle might restore her to good health, and he tried all of them.

We had two children then, Betty aged seven and Mary around sixteen months, the latter just old enough to begin responding to attentions and affections. And Dad turned all the affections he had had for Mother on what was left of his family. The two little girls followed him about the farm as if they were his shadow.

Dad's being the baby in his home, and the idol of his aging parents and older brothers and sister made of him a man respectful of and dependent upon others. He was almost helpless as far as making his own decisions were concerned. He would never do anything, even to deciding which shirt or tie to wear without consulting Mother. And he was dependent upon her judgment in every other decision that was to be made.

Through the years in our home while Mother lived, Dad had come to love Elizabeth as if she were his own daughter. And I doubt that she loved him any less than she did her own father.

Dad became doubly dear to all of us after Mother was gone, and we all did jur best to heal the grief and fill the emptiness that had come into his life. Elizabeth knew of his helplessness in doing things for himself, and she simply
carried on as Mother had done. Dad's health seemed to improve after that, perhaps because he no longer lived with anxiety and concern for Mother's health and well being.

After Mother was gone, we never went anywhere without taking Dad with us. He would sit in the rear seat of the car with a cherished grandaughter on each side.

In his way, Dad was equally as helpful and considerate of Elizabeth. From long years of practice of helping his mother, and later my mother when she was sick, he could do housework, cook and wash dishes almost as well as any woman. And many were the times that he would get dinner for me and any hired men when Elizabeth was busy doing the washing or if a sick child needed her attention.

In 1938 our son Marshall Wesley was born. His coming was a special joy to Dad, and for what he thought was a special reason. As all who have followed the sketches I have written may note, the descendants of John S. produced only two sons, Uncle Si's son Gilbert who died in 1935 and had no children, and myself.
And it seemed almost a certainty Grandfather John's branch of the family would produce no sons to carry on the name of Porter for him.

Dad was so pleased that although he had smoked a pipe moderately most of his life, he quit October 3, 1938, and never smoked again. He said, "I don't want this boy to ever see me smoke, and I hope he will never get the habit."... He never has.

Dad aad his grandson became the best of companions over the next nine years of his life. And anyone having known Dad then, and Marshall now at 38, they would note a striking resemblance of dispositions and personalities. They would note a feeling of kindness and concern for all living creatures. They would note a man who "If he has nothing good to say about a person, he doesn't say anything." Does this sound familiar?

Then on October 15, 1944 Elaine, our youngest child was born. Dad's birthday was Oct. 11, and during the last weeks he spoke hopefully that maybe the baby would be born on his birthday. It missed by only four days. This tiny featured baby girl came to aging parents, two older sisters and a brother and a doting grandfather. Dad was past the time of working outside much, except to sometimes hoe a row in the garden, and occasionally feed and water the chickens, and so spent much of his time in the house. He would hold the baby for hours and amuse her when Elizabeth did the housework. He was almost as good as a mother at amusing or pacifying a child.

Over all the years that Dad and I worked together, he seemed always ready to call out my name, "Ah Marshall." He wouldn't try doing anything alone, and he would call for me. After he became inactive and couldn't go to the fields or barn any longer he could plan more work for me while we were eating breakfast than I could have done in a week. It was just his way of trying to continue being a part of the out-door activities, even though he could no longer take
part in them.

To sum up Dad in a few short paragraphs I will say, he was a man whom I never knew to have a close, warm friendship with anyone. Yet he never had an enemy. With him, no one was all important, yet no one was unimportant regrardless of standing or station in life. He asked few favors, yet he would chance hurting himself to do favors for all who asked favors of him, and in a few cases he did hurt himself. But no one ever heard about it. He had a reserve that no one, not :ven myself ever got entirely through, and no one ever got closer than I did.
Everyone who met him enjoyed talking with him.

He was a common man who never acquired much of this worlds riches. He didn't ask nor expect much from life, only to be permitted to live it in peace. It took so little to keep him content. He was very slow to anger and would nearly always turn away wrath with a soft answer. He was not necessarily a father who did a lot of teaching while we were growing up. His pattern of living was an example for us to follow.

By 1940 our family was growing up. Farm help was becoming harder to get because the war boom was coming on, and the farm was simply not producing to give our children the education we figured they should have. So I began selling dairy 'arm equipment on days that I could spare away from the farm work. I surprised even myself with the progress I made tin the first two years. The farmers began feeling the labor shortage and they bought milking machines. I had orders for more machines than I could readily get because of shortages caused by the war. I nearly worked myself to death for about three years, trying to keep up with the farm work and installing milking machines.

Then, at Dad's suggestion that I put more time on the road job and sell our cows so as to lessen the work on the farm, I sold them, and turned the farm into hay and pasture land. That gave more time to attend the business of the selling job. And relieved me of the overwork of keeping two jobs going.

Here I should say that my knowledge of the farmer's and their business and problems was a great help to me when I began calling at their farms to sell them dairy farm equipment. I could talk their language, and meet them on a conation level of understanding. None of them ever treated me as a stranger or as if they felt any mistrust of me, as is often the case when many strangers call on farmers to make sales. I could talk crops and stock and dairy cows and in a short time we were no longer strangers. He needed what I had to sell, and I dealt fairly
vith him.

The half mile of hilly dirt road, had always been a handicap to our farm. I have spent whole winters hauling gravel on that road and having it in excellent condition, only to have a few heavy electric storms come the following summer
and wash it to gullies again.

During winters, snow and ice lay long on the north slope and we would have to put chains on the car and truck to get up as long as the ice stayed. The road was also bad to drift whei we had snow and high winds. It was during the heavy snows of 1945, after I had been shoveling snow for nearly two weeks that I decided it would be much more convenient for all the family if we would build a house near the highway and leave the farm. There wasn't really any reason to stay there then. But I had always dreaded the thoughts of leaving that old farm in fact I had never given a thought to leaving it before.

When I told Elizabeth of my thoughts of building a house near the road, she asked "Now Marshall, are you sure you will be satisfied to leave the farm. You know how you have always felt about it."
"Yes," I told her, "I have decided that is selfish of me to inconvenience the family for a whim of mine."

The next day she set about to draw the plans for the new house, and it was the plan the carpenters built it by.

All building material was in short supply because the war had just ended recently and building was a slow process. Though we began work on it in the spring of 1946, it was not ready to move into until early December of 1947.

Dad had come down to the new house several times when it was nearlng completion. He had picked the room he wanted. "I can see the sun come up from these windows," He said. "I have always slept in a room that faced east."
Dad hadn't seemed quite so well that fall, but we thought it was from a
spell of flu he had had in late July, from which he was slow making a comeback. Then, Nov. 18, 1947 he woke me long before daylight and told me he was sick. I did what I could for him until morning, then called the doctor. It was noon before he arrived, and upon examination he told us he had prostate cancer. Dad had turned 84 the past October 11. "He's too old to operate," the doctor told us. "How do you account for that, Doctor?" I asked. "He has never mentioned anything about pain or trouble, and he hasn't had a splinter or a pimple in the past thirty years that he didn't come to me about it."

"0. that's the way with such cancers. When you know you have it, it has you, the doctor replied."

The doctor gave him a sedative and the pain subsided. Dad seemed to become himself after he awoke from sleeping a few hours. He became more talkative than was usual for him while I sat at his bedside. "I feel that my time has come. I have had a good life. I never expected to live this long. Now I know what Mother meant when she used to say 'The longest life is a short one'."

When the doctor returned the next day he found Dad stronger than he had expected. "We'd better take him in to the hospital. He's stronger than I thought he was. Being a doctor, I feel that he deserved the chance that we might be able to do something for him yet," he said.

I called an ambulance and he was taken in to the hospital. But he lapsed into a coma during that night. He lived through the next day, then slept away. Like his father, he died only a short time before he would have moved into a ' new house.

Passing time becomes a sort of blur at times like that, and memories are not so clear. It seemed that my world had come apart, or had fallen on me for the next several weeks. I couldn't bring myself to realize that he was gone For months, yes years I could hear the familiar call "Ah Marshall'" In memory I can hear it still as clearly now as then.

After most men pass away and the big funeral is over their names are not often mentioned again. But over the next ten years I met many who knew him and countless times I was told, "If ever there was man who lived and deserved to live again it was your father."

. . .


At the time of this writing, Our son Marshall Wesley has two sons, David 14 and Daniel 10... and it is likely that they will carry on Grandpap John's branch oi the family name for many generations, even though for a long time it seemed his branch was coming to an end.

John married Rosa Ann Trescher in Sep 1895 in Allegany County, Maryland. Rosa was born about 1870; died on 10 Aug 1932 in Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Thomas + Mary Sittig. Mary died in UNKNOWN. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The following excerpt is from John Marshall Porter's "Sketches of Maryland Porters", circa 1976. Scott Carter Williams brought it to the attenetion of Michael A. McKenzie in 2018.

John Samuel Porter...My Grandfather

John S. Porter, son of Squire Mike and Elizabeth Devore was born 1828 at Play Place on Piney Mountain, the farm his grandfather Samuel bought from the Anderson heirs. And lest I forget to mention it later in my story, I will say
that from that location on the mountain top is one of the finest panoramic views in Allegany County. Westward, almost all of the eastern slope of Savage Mountain is visible. Looking eastward, one sees a fold of mountain tops all the way to the Blue Ridge Range in Virginia, and far beyond. To the south west lies the beauti¬ ful north branch valley of the Potomac River. North east, one sees a hundred hills and valleys lying fold on fold into Bedford County, Pennsylvania. The mountains and valleys of four states may be seen from there on any clear day.

John S. and his brothers had worked to clear and greatly enlarge Play Place. John married Rebecca, oldest daughter of Grandpap Si. His second cousin. Rebecca was another of whom Frank Porter wrote of as a "Saint of Earth." Her five children, William, Josiah, Michael, Margaret and John Wesley, my father were all born in the log house that Samuel had built near a strong flowing spring of good mountain water.

John and his family lived with Squire Mike until the latter's death in 1877. Thus, John's growing family had the influence of that old patriarch and philos¬ opher in their early environment. And that, with the guidance of a "Sainted mother," indoctrinated them with a kindness and gentleness rarely found in individuals.

This is not to say that they would stand for abuse or exploitation. They could all stand up for their rights when it was necessary. But they were courteous with all people regardless of high or low standing. They were mountain people, but had a refinement not often found in mountain people.

I never saw my grandfather John nor grandmother Rebecca, nor Uncle Will, Uncle Si nor Aunt Margaret. They all died before my time. I do have vivid recollections of Uncle Mike, of whom I shall write later.

John S. and his four sons made a good working team to operate the enlarged farm known as Play Place. The altitude of nearly 2500 feet was favorable for growing potatoes in. the red shale soil. But the location of the place was a lifetime of unhandiness for all who spent their lives there. It was three miles from Eckhart (all up hill). Three miles of (hard to maintain) mountain road that had first been an animal trail and moccasin path, trod by Indians on their way to their hunting grounds that later became Play Place. The road washed out with heavy rains and flash floods. It drifted with the snows of winter and isolated the people who lived there. But the family knew no other way of life and never thought of it as a hardship.

John S. never had good health. But he had knowledge and ability to manage that made him a good farmer. He knew his land, and would never abuse it by overcropping. Long before soil conservation agencies came into being, he was practicing what they came to advocate a half century later. He contoured his hilly fields and strip cropped them so as i:o control erosion. His program of crop rotation kept the soil in a state of high fertility for growing potatoes and other cash crops.

There were no machines to lighten the tasks of farmers in John's time. The more than a hundred bushels of potatoes that were planted every year were dropped by hand in the rows prepared with a wood beam shovel plow. Those potatoes had to be cultivated and hoed at least three times, and the wood beam shovel plows were used to cultivate. The younger boys fell heir to the heavy hoes that were made by local blacksmiths. And hoeing potatoes and corn was an all summer task for boys not big enough to handle a plow.

Then in the early 1880's came the first infestation of the Colorado Potato Beetles. "Potato Bugs," they came to be called, and the growers knew nothing about them. But they soon learned that unless controlled, they would eat the leaves from the vines and destroy the crop.

Controlling potato bugs became another link in the chain of hard work that went into growing the crop. My father told me that he and his brothers and other hired men would work for weeks on end holding a basin under the vines to catch the bugs when they slapped the vines with light paddles. The bugs were dumped into large pails that were filled with lime water, which killed them.

This would have been a huge, unpleasant task to go over every vine in a en acre field only once. But the bugs deposited eggs on the under sides of the leaves. And those eggs multiplied the bugs by a hundred to one when they hatched in nine days. So potato bugging became a month of extra work each summer to grow a potato crop, because once the potato beetles invaded a new territory they became an annual pest.

That was long before the times of mechanical spraying machines, which today could control the bugs on a ten acre field of potatos with chemicals in a scant hour.

But no matter about all that hard work, John S. was almost certain to have a good crop of potatoes to dig every year. And when time came for digging, there was another full month of hard work ahead. A strong man would take a heavy, two horse wood beam plow and go over the center of the potato rows to plow them out of the ground. Numerous helpers would follow the men with the plows and pick the potatoes up in buckets and put them in sacks. Around mid-afternoon the plows were stopped, and all hands went to work loading the sacks on wagons and hauling them to a cave that held two thousand bushels. The cave kept the potatoes crisp, and prevented them from freezing during the severe winters they often had on Piney Mountain.

Then after the potatoes were planted, cultivated, bugged, dug and stored in the cave, there was still the iob of grading and marketing them. The marketing was a job that, even though John S. was always ailing, he could do well. With sLiaw in the bottom of .he wagon bed to prevent freezing, the wagon was loaded with sacks of potatoes and John would start at daybreak for the five mile trip to Frostburg, or ten mile trip to Cumberland, to market his forty bushel load of potatoes.

There were no roads but dirt roads in those days, and such roads were either dusty, muddy or snowy, depending upon the weather. In winter, unless covered with snow the roads were likely frozen ruts.
All of us who live in what I will call "Comfort, and the lap of luxury" today could not even imagine what it was like to sit up on a wagon seat in cold, wintry weather and drive a team ten miles. With the loaded wagon, it took a full four hours to travel the ten miles to Cumberland. I know, because I did it a few times as a big boy prior to 1921 when we got our first farm truck. All a heavily dressed driver could do was get off and walk while driving the team when he got too cold. I know it was never a pleasant task for a man who was in poor health.

There were years, when the crop was short that potatoes sold for a dollar a bushel. But in years when the crop was big they sold for half dollar a bushel or less, and they were not in ready demand at that low price.

But John had his business built up. His customers knew that if they bought potatoes from him they could depend on the quality. He became known to his many friends and customers as "Potato John." Over the many, many years that he dealt with them, he knew every groceryman in Frostburg and Cumberland by their first names. John would invite them to come to his mountain farm for Sunday dinner, and many came. And patient Grandma welcomed them and prepared fine dinners for them.

As John's boys grew up they married. Uncle Will was near thirty when he married Mary Rase, a daughter of a German neighbor. Two daughters, Leota and Idella were born to them in the log house on Play Place. They lived in with Grandfather John and Grandmother Rebecca.

Uncle Si married Lizzie Rase, a sister to Uncle Will's wife. They went housekeeping in a small log house on the farm that had stood vacant for many years. Within eleven years they had Cecelia, Sophia and Gilbert, in that order.

And during that period, Uncle Mike married Lizzie Engle. Uncle Mike rented a small company farm not far from the Porter graveyard. They had two daughters, Miranda and Geneva.

Aunt Margaret, "Maggie" never married. She just stayed at home and helped Grandma. My father was still a young man then. Somehow, those Porters could live agreeably with two or three families in one house.

Forest fires were another frightful hazard on that mountain-top farm. The dense mountain laurel and other underbrush that grew up after a fire, made fuel for another almost every dry spring or autumn. It was almost a known fact that the fires were set deliberately to make huckleberries grow, since the vines grew profusely on land that fire had burned over. There was no forest service, nor penalties for setting fires in those days. But the fires that swept up the mountain from all directions often burned for weeks and trying to keep them under control kept the men from digging potatoes and husking corn and getting their fall work done. And fighting forest fires was hard, payless work.

There was always the danger of the fire getting close to the farm yard and burning the buildings. Also, all the fences were made of rails then, and when a rail fence burned it took much work at spring planting time to rebuild it.

It was during one of those terrible fires that Maggie became so frightened she never recovered from the effects of it. She believed the fire was still burning near the house and barn long after it had been extinguished. Her eyes became starey. She would leave her work in the house and steal off in the woods behind the barn and get herself lost. Her brothers would have to hunt for hours to find her. But she would run off again at the first opportunity. Her mind deteriorated rapidly. She soon became so despondent she paid no attention to anything nor anyone.

She had always been so companionable with Grandma, but then she no longer noticed her. Squire Mike had died some years before, and Maggie had been given his room, just as he had left it with books, manuscripts, business papers and documents all in the corner cupboard. She began spending all her time in that room. She would be up and standing at the east window to watch the sun come up over the mountain, and stand there staring at it until it went out of sight over the house-top. Then in the afternoons she would go to the west window and stare at the sun until it sank and set behind the western ridges. When the cold weather of fall came , Grandma would build a log fire in the open fireplace to make the room comfortable. Maggie would not notice that she was in the room.
But then, one day Grandma noticed that the corner cupboard door was open and that all of Squire Mike's papers were gone. Maggie had burned them in the open fireplace. Nothing was left but his Bible. (We have that bible in our home.)

Maggie lived only a few months longer and just wasted away to death. Her passing, and under those conditions was a great sorrow to Grandma. And by that time Grandfather John had become an invalid. He had grown heavy from a
diabetic condition. He became so big they had to get an extra large chair with wide arm rests to comfort his swollen arms. As his illness progressed, he began losing use of his fingers and toes a joint at a time over a period of two years, and then became helpless. His sons carried him from bed to chair, and from
chair to the table until he died in 1884. He was 56.

A nice new dwelling was under construction during the latter period of John's illness, but he died before it was ready to move into.

John married Rebecca Porter on 6 Mar 1851 in Allegany County, Maryland. Rebecca (daughter of Josiah M. Porter and Mary Margaret Combs) was born on 1 Oct 1824 in Eckhart Mines, Allegany County, Maryland; died on 28 Mar 1900 in Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The following excerpt is from John Marshall Porter's "Sketches of Maryland Porters", circa 1976. Scott Carter Williams brought it to the attenetion of Michael A. McKenzie in 2018.

Rebecca... "Grandma Porter," Oldest daughter of Grandpap Si.

As anyone who follows the line of descendants in the Porter genealogy can note, Rebecca and Squire Mike were second cousins, though she was a daughter of Mary Margaret Combs, Grandpap Si's first wife. She was four years older than John S., my Grandfather. I can describe her only from recollection of what Frank wrote of her, and from what my Father, Uncle Mike and the daughters of Uncle Will, and Uncle Si, who grew up very near her told me. From this, I have the impression that she was the very soul of kindness, gentleness and a feeling of love and understanding for all of God's creatures.

To quote what Frank Porter wrote of her, "Aunt Becky was small and petite. Never young, yet never old. Plain to homeliness, but lovely as an angel. Her inner goodness and gentleness shone through her physical shape and glorified it."

Her life was always hard but she knew no other, and she never complained. It had fallen her lot in life to do and care for many people, young and old. She had cared for Squire Mike in his blind and ailing years. She had the sorrow of caring for her only and beloved daughter, Maggie, with whom she had lost contact in her young life through mental illness.

She had the care of Grandfather John in the latter part of his comparatively young life. But she lived life as it was to be doled out to her. She never became bitter and gave way to self-pity, as we can see she might have done. Those qualities of sterling character, she had inherited from the early Porters she descended from, and she stamped them indellibly upon the characters and dispos¬ itions of her offspring. Yes, and almost everyone she came in contact with.

The farm on Piney Mountain in Grandma's time was for many years a sort of haven for outcasts. Old bachelors, of which there were always two or three made the place their home. They had come when they were younger and able to work. They stayed until they were old and disabled. They were never turned away. If they needed the services of the family doctor, Porters paid for it. If they died there, and several did, Porters paid for a respectable burial...though
there was, at that time a County fund for the purpose.

And in addition to this, Grandma Porter took two orphaned nieces, Ida and Matilda Sharp, daughters of her sister Katherine to raise to young womanhood, and marriage. The old log house on Play Place was never large, yet somehow Grandma found food and shelter for many people.

Even though the land was steep, rocky and hard to work, there was always abundant food, and such a houseful of residents, visitors and star-boarders consumed huge quantities of it. Some winters they butchered a dozen big hogs, and likely two beeves. They butchered a lamb or mutton from the sheep flock as the need or choice of meats arose. The garden was big, and furnished all the needed vegetables, the cellar was filled with potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables for winter. The cellar shelves x?ere loaded with fruits and vegetables of summer canning. And this was endless toil for Grandma, who did all the canning on a wood stove, in which, just to keep a good fire going was an almost endless task in itself.

The school at Eckhart where Grandma's children attended was a three mile walk across fields and over wood paths. Frank, who was two years younger than my father stated that he couldn't go to school until he was twelve. He was too fat to stand the walk.

The nearest church was also three miles distance. Yet all the sons of John and Rebecca had attended Sunday School and church regularly enough in youth to instill the custom of attending church all their adult lives. And in turn, instilling the custom of regular church going into their own children.

All during my early and middle life my father spoke frequently of "Mother", as he called Grandma. One saying of Grandma's that he repeated countless times was, "If you can't say something good about a person, don't say anything." My father lived religiously to that admonition. When gossip or villification was being indulged in by others, he simply remained silent, no matter how much the criticism or berating was deserved. He retained that practice to the end of his life, even though on many occasions, he would have been justified in returning evil for evil.

I have inherited and acquired many traits of characteristics from my father through the years of living and working side by side with him, and I wish I could have acquired complete control of my thoughts by remaining silent. But I have never been able to do that as he did.

Grandma Porter had little besides necessities of life...surely no luxuries. Yet she lived a noble, useful life of service to others with a peaceful mind until March of 1900. On the tombstone in Porter graveyard that marks the resting
place of John S. Porter, Margaret Porter is inscribed "Rebecca Porter" Born 1824...Died 1900. "She lived for others. Servant of God, Well done."

I never learned who composed that epitaph, but assume it was someone who knew and loved her... But who could it have been? It was said that "Everyone who knew her loved her."