John D. Porterfiled
Goodspeed's History of Southeast Missouri
Biographies of Scott County, 1888
John D. Porterfield, M.D., a prominent physician and farmer of Commerce, Mo., was born in Venango County, Penn. In 1843. His grandparents, William L. and Nancy (Lowrie) Porterfield, were natives of Ireland and Scotland, respectively. The Lowrie family came to America from Scotland as Presbyterian missionaries. William and Nancy Porterfield had eight children, viz: Robert L. (the father of our subject), Matthew (a physician, now deceased), Pliney (now living on the old homestead in Pennsylvania), Walter (a physician), Mary (deceased), Amelia (deceased), Lucy (deceased) and Catherine (wife of Kennedy Thompson, postmaster of Portsmouth, Ohio). William Porterfield died at the age of seventy-five years, and his wife at the age of seventy-one years. Robert L. Porterfield was born in Pennsylvania, where he received a good literary education and graduated as a physician and surgeon. He married Anna M. Donaldson, a native of Pennsylvania, and a descendant of the child's family, who came to America as Presbyterian missionaries. Robert L. Porterfield engaged extensively in farming, also owned land in the oil regions of Pennsylvania, and accumulated considerable property. In 1853 he removed with his family to Illinois, and located near Danville, where he purchased a large tract of land and engaged in stock farming. He was also a leading physician of the county, and practiced his profession until his death, in 1881, at the age of sixty-four years. His wife died in 1876, aged sixty-one years. To them were born six children, one of whom died in infancy. The others are Isabella (Mrs. John P. DeVol, of Marietta, Ohio), William (who enlisted in the Seventy-seventh Ohio Regiment, and was killed at the battle of Shiloh), Nancy J. (Mrs. William Armstrong of Ohio), John D. and Virgil R. (a graduate of the Ohio Medical College, who located at Commerce and died in 1881). When young, John D. assisted on his father's farm and attended school, graduating from the Marietta High School when he was twenty years of age. He had previously begun studying medicine under Dr. George Hildreth, one of the pioneer settlers of Ohio. In the winter of 1862-63 he took his first course of lectures at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and in the fall of 1864 came to Cape Girardeau, Mo. Soon after he removed to Commerce, but later to Thebes, Ill. In 1865 he returned to Commerce, where he has since resided. In 1884 he graduated from the Missouri Medical College at St. Louis, and is a member of the Southeast Missouri Medical Association. He was first married in 1866, to Sarah A. Hall, who was born and reared in Ohio. She died in 1873, having borne two children: Ida and Daisy, both also deceased. In January, 1874, he married Fannie V. Cullum, a native of Mobile, Ala., born in 1851. She is a daughter of George W. Cullum, and Davidella (Connover) Cullum, natives of Alabama and Kentucky. George Cullum was an extensive sugar and cotton grower, and died in Frankfort, Ky., in 1868. His wife died with yellow fever in New Orleans, in 1856. They had three children who grew to maturity: Fannie V., Ada W. (Mrs. C.W. Davis now deceased) and Cecile G. (Mrs. W.S. Patton, of Ohio). Mrs. Porterfield was educated at a Catholic school near Mobile, and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the W.C.T.U. The Doctor is a member of the A.F. & A.M. and of the A.O.U.W. Their children are Elmo P., John D., Beulah and William Lowrie.
Submitted by Connie Perkins
Poster-#-157-
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