Butte County
Biographies
CHARLES E. PORTER
CHARLES E. PORTER.--The efficient
supervisor from the First District of Butte County, Charles E. Porter, is a
native of Wisconsin, and was born in Marquette County, May 21, 1851. His father
was Richard Porter and was born in Calvin, Yorkshire, England, sixteen miles
from the city of Hull, January 6, 1811. He was married there to Ann Ford, who
was born in the same vicinity on March 1, 1820. They migrated to the United
States a few years later and settled in Ohio, but still later removed to
Wisconsin, where Mr. Porter preempted land near Blair, in Trempealeau Valley,
in the county of the same name, and engaged in farming there until his death,
in July, 1855. His wife reared her family of six children, of whom Charles E.
was the second youngest. She was a woman of rare ability and remarkable
personality and of strong Christian character. She was a devout member of the
Methodist Church, to which denomination her husband also belonged. She died in
the fall of 1880, at the age of sixty years.
C.
E. Porter was reared on the home farm in Trempealeau County and educated in the
public schools in his district, and when he had reached the age of twenty-one,
he went to Manistee, Mich., and for the following three years was engaged in
lumbering. In 1875 he arrived in Truckee, Cal., where he followed the same line
of business about thirty months. From lumbering he went into the fruit business
at Rockland, Placer County, buying and selling fruit, besides raising it to
some extent, and meeting with fair success.
The
identification of Mr. Porter with Butte County dates from 1881, when he came
here and engaged in agricultural pursuits and in raising fine horses and mules.
His home ranch is located six miles east of Gridley, on the Marysville and
Oroville road, where he is farming some eight hundred acres to grain and hay,
and raising cattle. He is also one of the large grain and hay buyers in the
county and does a very remunerative business each year. In the earlier days of
his residence here he raised fine horses and was owner of some fine blooded Percheron, Belgian and Canadian stallions, besides a fine
jack. He exhibited his stock at the State Fair in Sacramento for several years
and always took premiums. During the nineties he owned large bands of sheep
which added to his income very materially.
Besides
owning his home place, Mr. Porter has valuable real estate holdings in
Oroville. He also owns a fine grain and alfalfa ranch in Colony No. 7, west of
Gridley, and, in company with some other men of Butte County, is interested in
a large tract of land in Panama. As a side line to his farming operations, he
follows auctioneering, specializing in the sale of horses, stock and land; his
long experience with animals had made him one of the best judges of stock,
horses and cattle in Northern California, and being a ready talker and endowed
with a quick and keen perception, he is very successful and competent to carry
on auction sales.
Mr.
Porter was united in marriage in Butte County with Miss Mamie
Buckley, born in Butte County, a daughter of Charles Buckley, and early settler
of the Central House district. Four children have been born of this union:
Lillian B., wife of Robert Hill, of Livingston, Cal.; Elizabeth, who died at
two years of age; Charles E., Jr., a graduate of the Gridley High School and
who was associated with his father on the ranch until he volunteered, and who
is now serving in the United States Army in France; and Whitney F., also a
graduate of Gridley High School.
Mr.
Porter has become one of the leading men of the county, his popularity being
evidenced in 1904, when he was elected a member of the board of supervisors of
the county, from the First Supervisorial District,
and as further proof of his efficiency and impartial service, he has been
returned to the position and is now serving his fourth consecutive term, which,
when completed, will have given him sixteen years continuous service. For three
years he was chairman of the board. He has served as chairman of Butte County
Good Roads Committee for the past six years. He was appointed on the State Good
Roads movement, a matter in which he has been very active and intensely
interested, believing good roads to be most important, not only for commerce
and comfort of the people, but for the building-up of the county and state. Mr.
Porter is very popular with all classes of people, serves the district he
represents with faithfulness, and is impartial in his service to the whole
county. He is a stanch advocate of good schools and has served as a trustee and
clerk of the board of Central House district, for twenty years. He holds
membership in the Knights of Pythias and the Moose,
in Oroville, and with the Marysville Lodge of Elks, in all of which orders he
is an active member.
Transcribed by Sande Beach.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 455-456, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2007 Sande Beach.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies