Homer W. Porter, BiographyPorter County biographical sketches . . . .
Transcribed biography of Homer W. Porter
HOMER W. PORTER, County School Superintendent, was born in Onondaga County, N. Y., March 9, 1843, the only child of Hiram and Lucy (Ayres) Porter, natives of the same state and of English descent. Mr. Hiram Porter died when Homer W. was but two years old, his widow afterward marrying Abner Tillabaugh. Homer was reared by his grandmother Porter, and was educated chiefly by members of the family, and in his nineteenth year began teaching school at $8 per month; the next year he received $11. In the spring of 1863, he moved to Somonauk, Ill., where he engaged in the drug trade with an uncle for six months, taught another term of school, and in the spring of 1864 came to Valparaiso, and entered the Freshman year of the old Male and Female College. At the end of the summer he again taught school and clerked until the fall of 1868, when he married Miss Caroline Haste. He was next employed as first teacher in the grammar department of the high school; then farmed for some time, and continued farming and teaching until the spring of 1881, when he moved to Valparaiso, and was elected County School Superintendent in December of the same year, now filling the unexpired term of Reason Shinabarger, resigned. Mr. Porter is a Republican, and he and wife are parents of two children - Willie H. and Edith.
Source: Goodspeed, Weston A., and Charles Blanchard. 1882. Counties of Porter and Lake, Indiana: Historical and Biographical, Illustrated. Chicago, Illinois: F. A. Battey & Company. 771 p.
Page(s) in Source: 267
This biography has been transcribed exactly as it was originally published in the source. Please note that we do not provide photocopies or digital scans of biographies appearing on this website.
Biography transcribed by Steven R. Shook