Dr. Joshua Porter was born in 1759, at Salisbury, Litchfield Co., Conn. He was the eldest son of Colonel Joshua Porter, a prominent man in his day, for more than fifty sessions judge of probate, and representative in both the Colonial and State Councils. During the Revolution he commanded the Fourteenth Connecticut Regiment, which formed part of the brigade of General John Fellows, and was present with his regiment at the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Colonel Joshua Porter died at Salisbury, Conn., in 1826, aged ninety-five years.
Dr. Joshua Porter, his eldest son, after taking his degree at Yale College, and in medicine and surgery, was attached to the Continental army as surgeon's mate.
While serving in that rank at the disastrous battle of Long Island, he was taken prisoner and confined in the notorious prison-ship "Jersey," but subsequently was released on parole.
During the early part of the present century, suffering from the opening of an old wound, he moved with his family to Saratoga Springs, then just in the dawn of their celebrity, in hopes of deriving benefit from their curative properties. Here he resided until his death, which occurred in 1831.
He was the first president of the village, his son-in-law, Peter V. Wiggins, being village clerk, and he was long remembered for zeal and energy in his management of municipal affairs. For many years he was one of the principal physicians of the village, and the contemporary of Dr. John H. Steel. He was elder brother of the late John Augustus Porter, of Niagara Falls, and of General Peter B. Porter, secretary of war, etc., and Eunice Porter, wife of Colonel Albert Pawling, of the personal staff of General Washington, and first mayor of Troy. Another sister, Sally Porter, was wife of John M. Holley, and mother of Alexander H. Holley, late governor of Connecticut.
Of Dr. Porter's five children, his eldest daughter, Augusta, became the wife of R.F. Barnard, of Berkshire Co., Mass., and was the mother of Rev. Dr. F.A.P. Bernard, present president of Columbia College, N.Y., and General John G. Bernard of the United States Army. His youngest daughter, Mary, married, first, Henry Walton Andrews, second, Peter V. Wiggins.
