Early Life
Joseph C. Porter was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky, to James and Rebecca Chrisman Porter. The family moved to Marion County, Missouri, in 1828 or 1829, where Porter attended Marion College in Philadelphia, Missouri, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church. About 1844, Porter married Mary Ann E. Marshall (d. DeWitt, AR “about two years after the war closed,” according to Porter’s sister). They subsequently moved to Knox County, remaining there until 1857, when they moved to Lewis County, and settled five miles east of Newark. Family members assert that only one photograph of Porter was known to exist, and it was destroyed when his home was burned by Union soldiers.
Porter had strong Southern sympathies, and was subject to harassment by pro-Union neighbors, since he lived in an area where loyalties were sharply divided. His brother, James William Porter (b. 1827, m. Carolina Marshall, sister to Joseph’s wife Mary Ann, 1853), was also a Confederate officer and Joseph's trusted subordinate, reaching the rank of major. The brothers went to California during the Gold Rush of 1849, then returned to Missouri and farming together before the war.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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