Representative women of New England/Florence C. Porter
FLORENCE COLLINS PORTER, of the editorial staff of the Los Angeles Herald, was born in Caribou, Aroostook County, Me., August 14, 1853, daughter of Samuel Wilson and Dorcas S. (Hardison) Collins. Mrs. Porter's father, Samuel W. Collins, one of the early pioneers of Aroostook County, served several terms in the Maine Legislature, at first as Representative and later as State Senator, and also held important town offices. He was a manufacturer of lumber and a man noted for generous and kindly deeds and democratic principles. He died in 1898 at the advanced age of eighty-seven.
The Hardisons also were a family of early pioneers, descendants of Ivory Hardison, who made an impress on the life and character of the new town in the Aroostook forest. Mrs. Dorcas S. Collins inherited many of the sterling qualities of her mother, Mrs. Dorcas Abbott Hardison, a very capable woman, of great strength of character, for whom she was named.
Mrs. Collins has lived to see her five children occupy positions of influence and honor. She has recently gone to make her home with her daughter Florence, Mrs. Porter, in South Pasadena. At seventy-six years of age she is in possession of active mental faculties, with the prospect of continued long life in the land of sunshine.
Mrs. Porter was graduated from the public schools of Caribou, and has always taken an interest in educational matters. Elected as a member of the School Committee of Caribou in 1882, she served in that capacity one year, being one of the first women in the State of Maine to hold such a position. After the death of her husband, the Rev. Charles William Porter, in 1894, she served for four years as Superintendent of the schools of Caribou, and for a year was editor and proprietor of the Aroostook Republican. The paper was a financial success, and proved to be the entrance into a larger field of journalism. Mrs. Porter's maternal uncle, Wallace L. Hardison, having purchased the Los Angeles Herald, offered her a lucrative and important position on the editorial staff of that paper. Accordingly, in October, 1900, Mrs. Porter transferred her interests from Maine to the Pacific coast.
Mrs. Porter has always been active in matters that pertain to woman^s work and advancement. When but a girl in her teens, she drove ten miles to hear the first woman speaker that ever came into that part of the country m which she lived. Temperance work early attracted her attention, and for four years she was the national secretary of the Non-partisan Woman's Christian Temperance Union, whose headquarters were at Cleveland, Ohio.
From 1896 to 1898 Mrs. Porter was vice-president of the Maine Federation of Women's Clubs and from 1898 to 1900 the president. When she went to Los Angeles, the Federation showed its appreciation of her services by creating the office of honorary president, and giving her that title. In Los Angeles she is a member of the Friday Morning Club and of the Ebell, and an honorary member of the Ruskin Art Club. At the tune of the biennial meeting of 1902 she edited an illustrated souvenir edition of the Los Angeles Herald that attracted wide attention, and drew forth many compliments because of the accuracy of the biographical sketches of club women and the artistic quality of the work. She conducts a weekly column. She is in demand by clubs and child-study circles for short addresses on topics relating to Women's work.
Florence Collins was married to the Rev. Charles William Porter, November 3, 1873. Mr. Porter was born in Houlton, Me. Ordained as a Congregational clergyman, he served as pastor of the churches of Caribou, Oldtown, and Winthrop. He died in Caribou, July 17, 1894. Three children survive their father, namely: Helen Louise, born in Caribou, July 28, 1876; Florence S., born in Caribou, September 1, 1885; and Charles Winthrop Porter, born in Winthrop, Me., January 14, 1891. Helen Louise was married in October, 1900, to Mr. John Gregg Utterback, of Rochester, N.Y. The two younger children are living with their mother in their new home, the "Inglenook," recently built at South Pasadena.