Samuel Doak Porter

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Letter to the Editor Samuel Doak Porter

Email from Alan Williams January 2022: In the 1960’s, Samuel Doak Porter of Michigan researched his Porter line. His work was eventually published as ‘The Bluebook’, “A genealogy of the Porter Family of Maryland, West Virginia and Michigan” in 1970. SDP visited Allegany County repeatedly during his research and his sources included courthouse records, interviews with descendants, published histories of the 19th and 20th century and cemetery visits. He also corresponded with and visited other researchers like Richard Koch (our Boy Scoutmaster!) and G.T. McKenzie.

He got a lot right, especially from the 19th century on, and a bit wrong. He put into print some oral history and repeated claims that dog the search for truth this day.

Everything he recorded about John Porter (b1693) and an emigrant from England is hearsay and secondhand. To this date, not a single document of any kind has been found to verify a fact of his life. That said, Scott and myself and our family don’t discount the info out of hand, but view it with a highly skeptical eye.

There’s a famous portrait of Squire Jack Porter titled “American Independence”. In 1912 the Baltimore Sun ran a story about the painting, which included a claim that Squire’s ancestors were Irish, landing in Boston circa 1717. There is, in fact, a record of a John Porter arriving Boston about that time. With some heat, Jack’s descendant, Glissan Porter responded with a letter to the editor. It included this statement:



Squire Jack’s father, is John Porter (1737-1810) The letter writer, Glissan Porter was born in 1849, early enough to have known and spoken with his Grandfather, Squire Jack. This then is the oral tradition. Additionally, SDP attached a wife to ‘John the Emigrant’ who he named as Eleanor Durier. The only basis for that addition is a 20th Century interview SDP had with a woman named Malvinia Barcus, who said she had once seen that in an ‘old family bible’. Bible has never surfaced and no genetic evidence exists to tie John to an Elinor Durier. The woman who is frequently named was a Hugenot, and an unlikely match to a Catholic Jacobin dissenter of 1715.

SDP named John’s children’s birthplaces as ‘Carrolton, Carroll County’. Again, no records of that place reference ‘Our Porters’, although many people named Porter are present in Colonial Maryland. As it turns out, DNA evidence not available to SDP does tend to substantiate a portion of Glissan Porter’s assertion.

Porter is an extremely common last name. In Maryland many early Porters are descended from an early Virginia colonist, Phillip Porter, whose descendants lodged in Southern Maryland and became prominent in and around Baltimore. In Pennsylvania, the colony made active efforts to bring in ‘Ulster Scots’ who settled the Western frontier (roughy present day Adams County, as least as far as Chambersburg PA) in exchange for free land. These adventurous souls served as a buffer for Philly against both Indians and French forces before the Mason-Dixon was ever drawn. Some served the drawing of that line. Armstrong Porter is such a line, a Porter with a scottish Y chromosome and a recent history in Ulster. These folks were Protestant.

We can verify three brothers, Moses,b. 1735, John b.1737 and Henry Porter b. 1740, all sharing the same Y chromosome and very distinct from the other Porters mentioned above.
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/porter/default.aspx?section=ycolorized

R1b > U152 > L2+, Italo-Celtic

All three men had this unique Y, characterized as ‘Italo-Celtic’ which is relatively rare in England, more common in the East than the West, and most common near London. It is said to be sourced in the Italian Alps, which overlaps very conveniently with one of the Roman Legions that occupied Britain about 1500 years before John Porter’s birth in Southeast England. That much, at least, tends to substantiate Glissan’s cradle story.

This website also allowed us to find and correspond with Edwin Porter, now nearing 100 years of age in Oregon, who contributed his Y naming Henry as his oldest verified ancestor, 1740-1820. ‘Uncle Ed’ did an incredible job of tracing Henry descendants, and he had a match to him as well. While Moses and John had stayed in Allegany County, Henry headed down the Boonesboro road and was lost to our local history. SDP makes no mention of him at all. This really allowed our family tree to expand, but this is also our brick wall. Three brothers with an identical Y, unique among all Porters tested at this site. They certainly had a father in common!

I’ll send a continuation email later to speak on the Pennsylvania connection and a solution to Carrollton. A missing grave helped verify where our boys had been.
And why Arnold’s settlement is important. :-)

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