San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN A. PORTERFIELD
A progressive rancher and
public-spirited citizen of Lodi, John A. Porterfield contributed toward the
more rapid and scientific development of California agriculture. He was born June 11, 1861, in the lumber
woods of Elk County, Pennsylvania, where his father successfully engaged in
lumbering. When John A. Porterfield was
four years old, his father took his family down the river upon a raft to Allegheny
County, in the same state, where he built a sawmill; and still later he removed
to Indiana County, Pennsylvania.
John A. Porterfield attended both
the district school and the normal school at Indiana, and then taught school
for ten years in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kansas, and served one term as
county superintendent in Meade County, Kansas.
He took up 320 acres of government land in the county, and continued to
acquire more land until he owned 960 acres.
He engaged in stockraising and made a specialty of blooded Galloway
cattle. Selling off 800 acres of his
ranch, he located in Fowler, Meade County.
There he took an active part in civic affairs, becoming both a trustee
of the township and a school trustee.
In 1909 Mr. Porterfield located at
Lodi, after a visit to California a couple of years before. He bought a ranch of eight acres on North
Church Street, from D. F. Owens, and there he makes his home. He has a variety of fruit trees, and also a
vineyard. He has bought, improved and
sold a number of vineyards since he came to Lodi, realizing in each case a fair
profit.
Mr. Porterfield was married in 1895
at Meade, Kansas, to Miss Anna Bowen, of Meade County, Kansas, and their union
has been blessed with six children, all of them born in Kansas. Bernice is a graduate of the Chico Normal
School, and is a teacher in the Tracy public schools; Waldo is with the Stewart
Fruit Company of Lodi; Eva is training in the Children’s Hospital, San
Francisco, for the profession of nursing; Kenneth and Crawford are seniors in
Lodi High School; and Vernon is in the eighth grade of the grammar school. Mr. Porterfield and his wife are members of
the First Congregational Church of Lodi, and contribute to its benevolences.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1127. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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