PORTER, JAMES ALEXANDER (1848-1922)

PORTER, JAMES ALEXANDER, Baptist minister, Doaktown field, 1891-94; b. Sheffield, N.B., Sep 1848, s/o William Brittain Porter and Eleanor Jane Catherine Worden; m. 1873, Hepzibah Bailey, of York County, N.B.; d. Saint John, 10 Oct 1922.

James A. Porter was ordained a Baptist minister in 1889 and was called to the Upper Miramichi in the fall of 1891. He preached at Doaktown, and during some of his term, at least, at Upper Blackville and Underhill, as well as at New Salem and Ludlow.

On 2 July 1893 Porter participated in the service at which a new Baptist church was dedicated at Doaktown to replace one which had been destroyed by fire. Less than a year later, however, William Swim, who held a mortgage on the building, took possession of it and sold it at auction.

Porter disposed of his own property at Doaktown in 1894 and left for Butternut Ridge in Kings County. He was subsequently the minister of at least twelve different Baptist churches in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The last of these was at South Devon (Fredericton), where he retired due to illness prior to 1920. He was a patient in the Provincial Hospital in Saint John at the time of his death.