CHAPTER XXIV.

LIFE OF GEORGE K. PORTER.

OUR LEATHER INTERESTS-NATIVITY AND LINEAGE-HIS FATHER AND MOTHER- HIS BIRTHPLACE AND TRAINING-- EARLY CAREER IN CALIFORNIA THE BOOT AND SHOE INDUSTRY-SAN FRANCISCO FACTORYOPERATIONS IN REAL ESTATE SENATOR FOR SANTA CRUZ AND MONTEREY COUNTIES-THE SLAVERY QUESTION-THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION-MRS PORTER-HABITS, MANNER, AND APPEARANCE-SUMMARY OF CAREER.

UNTIL after the gold discovery, the only cargoes available for vessels loading on these shores consisted of the hides and tallow obtained from the thousands of wild cattle that overran the hills and valleys of the coast range. For hides one dollar apiece was paid, and that only in goods received in exchange at from five to ten times their original cost. For many years later, shipments continued on a steadily increasing scale, the export for 1865 reaching the maximum figure of 340,000 hides. Within recent years, however, the growth of our leather interests has not only absorbed the home supply, but has forced our manufacturers into foreign markets, as to Texas, to Mexico, to Central and South America. Thus, instead of shipping our hides abroad, to be returned in the shape of fabrics, with all the added charges of freight, manufacture, and commissions, we now convert them into leather and leathern goods, into boots and shoes, harness and saddlery, hose and belting, valued with other products at little short of $20,000,000 a year, and not only meeting the demands of the Pacific

coast, but with an export trade to neighboring countries, and even to the Atlantic states.

Foremost among those by whom these results have been accomplished is Mr George Keating Porter, of the well-known manufacturing and commercial firm of Porter, Slessinger and company. Not only as one of our pioneers, not only as, in his own department, the pioneer manufacturer of the Pacific coast, but for his merits as a citizen, a statesman, an ex-senator, and as one of the foremost business men in a community noted for its business ability, is the story of his life deserving of a place among the founders of our western commonwealth.

A native of Duxbury, Massachusetts, his natal day being the 9th of February, 1833, Mr Porter's lineage is traced to one of the oldest of New England families. Its progenitor, John Porter, who was born in Dorsetshire, England, near the close of the sixteenth century, settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, about the year 1635. He was a man of means and of no small influence in the colony, holding among other positions that of deputy to the general court in 1668. On the 6th of September, 1676, occurred his decease at the village of Salem, and at fourscore years of age. Among his descendants, apart from the direct line of Mr Porter's ancestry, are many who were noted in the annals of New England, such men as his grandson, also named John, representative to the general court and moderator of town meetings; as Tyler Porter, of the fourth generation in direct descent, a physician, and a distinguished patriot of the revolutionary war; as Major Porter, who served throughout that war; as the Reverend Nehemiah Porter, a graduate of Harvard, and for nearly half a century minister of the Congregational church at Ashfield, Massachusetts; as Asahel Porter, who lost his life at Lexington; as General Moses Porter, one of the heroes of Bunker hill, who fought under Washington throughout the war, was a central figure in the war

of 1812, and passed his lifetime in the service of his country. But of the lineage of the long-descended family, and more especially of George Keating's branch of the family, a record has been given in the preceding chapter in connection with his cousin's biography.

His father, John Porter, a native of Voluntown, Connecticut, a graduate of Darmouth college, a physician in excellent practice, and one of the most prominent men in the state, was a man of goodly presence, nearly six feet in stature, and of perfect physical development, strong in body and mind, possessed of excellent judgment, and of that rarest of all the senses, sound, practical, common sense. He was of a social

and genial temperament, in manners affable, with hosts of friends and without a single enemy. In all the country round there were none whose loss was more deeply and widely regretted, when, at a ripe old age, he was gathered to his rest, his faneral being more largely attended than any in this portion of the state, except for that of the great New England statesman and patriot, Daniel Webster.

His wife, née Ann Thomas, was a native of Marshfield, Massachusetts, her birthplace being on a farm which formed a portion of an English grant to her forefathers, and her burial place beside her husband's, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She was a woman of strong physical and mental powers, a lady of culture and literary tastes, in religion a Unitarian, and strict, bus without severity, in the training of her children. Their names were John T. Porter, now a resident of Watsonville, California; George Keating, the subject of our sketch; Jane, the only daughter, now the widow of Doctor Kirk H. Bancroft, of Lowell; Frank F.; the twin brothers, William Ray and Charles Henry; and the youngest, Theodore C., now residing in Honolulu.

In a two-story brick house surrounded with handsome grounds, George first saw the light of day. The