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Jasper County, Iowa
Historical and Genealogical Data Exchange
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Harry
Wilson Porter Harry Wilson Porter was born in Fairview Township,
this County, January 10,1881. He is
the son of James M. and Virginia R. (Bitting) Porter, the father born in Decatur
County, Indiana, March 13, 1850, and the mother was born in Des Moines, Iowa,
January 13, 1857. His paternal
grandparents, Caspar and Martha (Sidwell) Porter, were born in Decatur County,
Indiana, the former on February 27, 1827, and the latter on April 17, 1829.
Caspar Porter was a blacksmith by trade and he conducted a shop for some time in
Shelbyville, Indiana. He and his
wife were members of the Christian Church.
The death of Caspar Porter occurred in 1864 at Shelbyville. Simon Bitting, the maternal
grandfather of the subject, came to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1848 when the place as
a mere village and he was the first person to conduct either a boarding house or
hotel there. He was also the
first person to deliver the first newspaper, the Register-Leader, which is still
published there. James M. Porter,
father of the subject, was the only child in his family to survive infancy and
his mother died when he was nine years old and his father when he was fourteen.
Thus he was thrown out into the world on his own resources when quite
young, and although the discipline was hard it was good training for later life.
When his mother died in 1859 the father of the subject came to Jasper
County, Iowa, to live with his grandparents, John and Sarah Porter, who had
emigrated with team and wagon to Fairview Township in 1858 and there he grew to
manhood and attended the district schools, later went to college at Pella, Iowa,
and to a business college at Des Moines. Thus
having obtained a good education, he started out in the business world as clerk
in a drug store in Des Moines, where he remained two years, then returned to
Jasper County and began renting his grandfather's place, a part of which he
finally bought. In 1901 he traded
his farm for the elevator and grain business at Fairmount, this County, and has
continued the grain and coal business to the present time, enjoying a very
satisfactory business, his trade covering a wide territory.
His family consists of two sons and one daughter, Mrs. Ida M. Livingston,
Fay, and Harry Wilson, of this sketch. The subject
attended the public schools in Fairview Township and the Iowa Business College
at Des Moines. He then took a
position as clerk in the Des Moines National Bank, where he worked five months,
then in August 1906, he came to Fairmount, Jasper County, and engaged in the
coal and grain business as a-partner with his father under the firm name of J.
M. Porter & Son. They have been
very successful handling coal and buying and selling grain, their trade being
constantly on the increase. Politically, the
subject is a Democrat, and he has served his district as school director. Harry W. Porter was married
on December 31, 1905, to Mary McGregor, who was born in Des Moines.
She is the daughter of James McGregor, a well-known contractor of that
city. To this union two children have been born:
Don Sheldon Porter, born March 11, 1907, and Vern Wilbert, born October
11, 1909, died May 21, 1910. Personally, Mr. Porter is a young man of much business promise, a genial, frank, straightforward young man whom everybody likes. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa, Gen. James B. Weaver, Editor-In-Chief, B.F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912, p. 915. |
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