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Extract from Rerick's Memoirs of Florida Vol. 2 (1902)
Joseph Yates Porter, M.D., State Health Officer of Florida, was born at Key West, October 21, 1847. His father, who bore the same name, was a native of Charleston, S. C., and while a young man located at Key West and was married there in 1845 to Miss Mary Simms Randolph. he died at about the age of thirty, and two weeks before his son was born. Dr. Porter's mother died when he was twelve years of age. His paternal grandfather was Willliam L. Porter, originally from Boston, Mass., who made his home at Charleston, S. C. His maternal grandfather was Capt. Thomas Mann Randolph, an officer in the United States Navy, who died of yellow fever at Key West in 1835, at the age of thirty-seven years, being at the time in command of the United States revenue cutter "Washington." He was a Virginian by birth and a member of the Randolph family of that state.
Dr. Porter was graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in the year 1870. Returning home he was shortly afterward appointed acting assistant-surgeon in the United States Army and sent to Fort Jefferson. He spent three and a half years at that post, and while there had charge of an epidemic of yellow fever which prevailed in 1873. In June, 1875, after passing a successful examination in New York, he was appointed assistant-surgeon in the United States Navy with the rank of first lieutenant. Five years later he was promoted to the rank of Captain, and was altogether in the United States service for nineteen years, during which time he was stationed at Tortugas, Key West, Tampa, Miami, and in the state of Texas.
He finally retired from the Navy and in 1889 was made State Health Officer of Florida, a position he has held ever since. The duties of his office, made such demands upon his time that he was obliged to abstain from general practice entirely. While he has maintained his residence at Key West, his official duties caused him to be absent about the State much of the time.
By reason of the large experience he has had with yellow fever, Dr. Porter has become an authority in the treatment of that dread disease, and is recognized as such in everything relating thereto. He has passed through various yellow fever epidemics in his home city and elsewhere. Prior to the establishment of the State Board of Health and the creation of the office of State Health Officer in 1889, the yellow fever epidemics in Florida were of frequent occurrence: but since that date there has been but one epidemic in the state, that of 1899. It would be impossible to render a greater service to humanity than to find a means of preventing or even of checking this terrible scourge of the race. That Dr. Porter has done somewhat in this direction entitles him to the earnest thanks of the people of his section, and this is heartily accorded him. During the yellow fever epidemic at Jacksonville in 1888, he was the surgeon in charge of the United States government relief meausres, and in recognition of his services the State Legislature honored him with a vote of thanks. in 1887 he passed through the epidemics of yellow fever both in Key West and Tampa.
In 1900 he was elected a member of the Florida Legislature from Monroe county.
His marriage to Miss Louise, daughter of William Curry, a merchant of Key West, occurred June 1, 1870. They have four children: William R., insurance agent; Mary Louise, wife of Hon. W. Hunt Harris, state senator from Monroe county; Roberta, wife of W.W. Mountjoy, of New York city; and Joseph Yates, Jr., a student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York city.
Extract from The Herald, Miami, Florida, March 1927:
Dr. Porter
Dying in the very room in which he was born, and living always in the house where he was born, and where he grew from babyhood, to boyhood, and to manhood, he was always a center around which the interest of his community and finally of his state, gathered. Genial, courteous, gallant and efficient, Dr. Porter was a marked figure and well earned the respect, confidence and love of the state for which he had done so much.
Dr. Porter was in his eightieth year, a full rounded out four score years, all of them filled with thought and labor for his fellow men.
