Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/39

 JOHN ADDISON PORTER

was born at New Haven, Conn., April 17, 1856; is the eldest son of Prof. John Addison Porter, a scientist of note and the first Dean of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. Prof. Porter married Miss Josephine Earl Sheffield, daughter of the founder of that institution; was educated at Gen. Russell's Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven, and at the Hopkins Grammar School of that city, where he took a course in the classics, previous to entering Yale University; was graduated from the academical department of Yale in the class of 1878, having devoted particular attention while in college to literary work, in which he took a high rank in his class. After leaving college, Mr. Porter studied for the bar at Cleveland, Ohio, in the office of his uncle, Mr. William J. Boardman, who was for many years one of the leading attorneys of that city. Mr. Porter did not enter upon the study of the law, however, with the intention of practicing, but preparatory to newspaper work. In 1880 he was a member of the local staffs of the New Haven (Ct.) Daily Palladium and Hartford (Ct.) Courant, and was a frequent contributor to the New Englander, Critic, Century, and other leading magazines. In 1883 Mr. Porter was married to Miss Amy Betts, the eldest daughter of the late Colonel George F. Betts, of New York City, whose father, Judge Betts, was in his day one of the most eminent authorities upon admiralty law. The Betts family is well known socially in New York, being connected by descent and marriage with a number of the most prominent of the older