JACKSON CO., IA: BIOGRAPHY: John Porter
From the A.T. Andreas Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa, 1875

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NOTE:  For more information on Jackson County, Iowa 
       Please visit the Jackson County, IAGenWeb page  
       at http://iagenweb.org/jackson/
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JOHN PORTER - The subject of this brief sketch, was born May 14, 
1822, near Colchester, Vermont, at a point on Lake Champlain called 
"Porter's Point," where his childhood and youth were spent. He received 
a limited common school education, and was by his own choice 
apprenticed when quite young to the carpenter's trade. As soon as he 
had mastered that he commenced work for himself, running for some 
time a sash and door factory in his native state. He removed to Chicago 
in 1844, when that Garden City of the Lake was a small village, and 
worked at his trade in connection with the saw mill and lumbering 
business, running the first patent bevel siding machine ever in that city. 
 
He was married July 4, 1846, to Miss A. Boomer, at Amesville, Illinois, 
now Garden Prairie, where he embarked in the mercantile business and 
remained about one year, when he returned to Chicago and engaged 
extensively in erecting business houses and dwellings, which he readily 
sold at a large advance above cost. From Chicago he went to 
Waukegan, Illinois, and remained for some four years, employed mostly 
in the same business, when he located at Bellevue, Iowa, in the boot and 
shoe trade, and after remaining about one year, sold out and removed to 
Delhi, Delaware County, Iowa, where he still resides. Here he put up 
several fine buildings, and successfully carried on an 
extensive real estate business, until the financial crash of 1857, when he 
was carried down, having endorsed a large amount of paper for other 
parties, and had nothing left but twenty-three hundred acres of wild land, 
which it was impossible to dispose of, or even give away. During 1856 
and part of 1857, he owned and managed a large agricultural implement 
store in Dubuque. 
 
His health having been greatly impaired by constant and close 
application to business, he determined to turn his energies to the more 
quiet and congenial occupation of nurseryman. For a time he cultivated 
fruit trees chiefly, but his taste soon led him to drop that part of the 
business, and devote himself exclusively to raising evergreens and 
ornamental trees, which branch he has since carried on with marked 
success. He now has forty acres of choice land lying contiguous to Delhi, 
which exhibits a high order of taste, skill and care. Fourteen acres of this 
he has devoted to ornamental purposes, and has a plan that he is 
carrying out year by year, which will, when completed, render his 
place, already one of the finest in the state, beautiful in the highest 
degree. His evergreens are unequaled in the Iowa, while his grounds 
exhibit originality of thought, taste, and perfection of execution, seldom 
found even in large cities. His design embraces a pleasant game and 
driving park, with an artificial lake, that for beauty and utility of design is a 
perfect gem, set in the midst of a smoothly shaven lawn. And shaded by 
the rich dark foliage of evergreens, among which are rustic seats, 
croquet grounds and rare and curious specimens gathered from all parts 
of the Northwest.