Horace Porter

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Husband Horace Porter ^{1 2}

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           Born: 15 Apr 1837 - Huntingdon, Huntingdon Co, PA 1 2
     Christened: 
           Died: 29 May 1921
         Buried: 

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         Father: Gov. David Rittenhouse Porter (1788-1867/1868) 1 3 4 5 6
         Mother: Josephine McDermott (      -      ) 1 6 7

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Wife

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Children

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General Notes: Husband - Horace Porter

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He was an American soldier and diplomat who served as a lieutenant colonel, ordnance officer and staff officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, personal secretary to General and President Ulysses S. Grant and to General William T. Sherman, vice president of the Pullman Palace Car Company and U.S. Ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905.

. . . soldier, scholar, statesman, diplomat; graduated from West Point, 1860, served throughout the Civil War, filling every commissioned grade up to brigadier-general; private secretary to President Grant, 1869-77; prominent business man, being president of several large corporations; distinguished orator and author; received degree of LL.D., 1894; ambassador to France, 1897-1905.

He studied at the Lawrence Scientific School, at Harvard, and was graduated at the United States Military Academy, at West Point, in 1860. After serving as an instructor in artillery at the academy, he was ordered to duty with the army at the beginning of the Civil War, as Chief of Artillery. He had charge of the batteries at the capture of Fort Pulaski, and was wounded in the first attempt to capture Charleston. He served on the staff of General Rosecrans. He went through the Chickamauga campaign with the Army of the Cumberland. When General Grant came east, Porter came with him as an aid-de-camp on his staff, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was with the Army of the Potomac in the campaign of 1864-65, from the Wilderness to Appomattox. He was brevetted to be captain, U. S. A., for gallant and meritorious service at the siege of Fort Pulaski, major at the Wilderness, and lieutenant-colonel at Newmarket Heights. For services during the war, he was made colonel and brigadier-general. After the war he made a series of tours, by General Grant's direction, through the south and on the Pacific coast. General Porter resigned from the army in 1873. He was Assistant Secretary of War, while Grant was Secretary of the Interior, in the cabinet of President Johnson, and was secretary to the President, during the first administration of General Grant. After leaving the army, General Porter became interested in railroad enterprises. He was manager of the Pullman Palace Car Company, in New York, and the first president of the Lake Shore Railroad. He was appointed Ambassador to France, by President McKinley, in 1897, a position in which he greatly distinguished himself. He was later a member of The Hague Peace Congress.
General Porter was noted as a witty after-dinner speaker and, for a man of affairs, he was a prolific writer. As early as 1866, he published "West Point Life," and in later years he contributed many important and valuable articles to the leading magazines. Among these, his accounts of General Grant's brilliant campaign from the Wilderness to Appomattox are especially noteworthy.

1 John W. Jordan, LL.D., Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania (New York, Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), Pg 1303.

2 G. O. Seilhamer, Esq, The Bard Family (Chambersburg, PA: Kittochtinny Press, 1908), Pg 449.

3 William C. Armor, Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: James K. Simon, 1873), Pg 379.

4 William Henry Egle, History of the County of Dauphin in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: Everts & Peck, 1883), Pg 526.

5 —, History of Adams County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Warner, Beers & Co., 1886), Pg 499.

6 G. O. Seilhamer, Esq, The Bard Family (Chambersburg, PA: Kittochtinny Press, 1908), Pg 443.

7 William Henry Egle, History of the County of Dauphin in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: Everts & Peck, 1883), Pg 528.