JAMES RUSSELL PORTER

The following bio was taken from page 349 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

 Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Cemeteries of Tx 

    James Russell Porter’s grandparents, Jackson Porter and Mary Ann Seale, were married in Alabama in Shelby County in 1848.  Their son, Green Berry Isaac Porter (known to his friends as G.B.I.), was born in Collera, Alabama in 1861.  G.B.I. came to Texas as a young man, probably in the early 1880’s, and stayed with his sister Madora who was already in Rusk County.  In December, 1886, he married Melissa Ella Phillips, daughter of Columbus Washington Phillips, Confederate soldier from Rusk County.  They made their home on the old Nacogdoches Road in the Ebenezer Community.  There they raised their thirteen children: Clara Leota, 1887; Columbus Jackson, 1889; Glenn Hightower, 1890; Emma Ennie, 1892; Mary Denver, 1895; Zeb Melton Porter, 1893; Myrle, 1897; Lura, 1899; Berry Foster 1900; James Russell, 1902; Roxy Lou, 1904; John Seale, 1907; and Connell, 1909.

 At the age of fifteen, Russell ran away from home and caught a freight train to Childress, Texas, where it was rumored that there was more money to be made picking cotton than in Rusk County.  After staying about six weeks, he came back home again.  Evidently that trip made an everlasting impression on him, as he never again in his life got that far away from home.

 In December, 1929, Russell married Pauline Heifner, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Heifner of Lufkin.  Russell was a butcher and a farmer.  He and Pauline made their home on East Main Street in Henderson where their children were born and raised: Irma Nell, 1932; Clara Lynn, 1936; James Berry, 1941; and William Robert, 1945.  Nell married the late Dan Angus Compton in 1952, and they have three children: Dannette, Sherry, and Scott.  Clara Lynn married Garland O’Neal Gibson in 1954 and they have two children, Gary and Randy.  James Berry married Sara Katherine Maloney in 1966, and they have two children, Heather and Erin.  Robert married Rhonda Kay Wofford in 1969, and they have four children: James, Angela, Melissa and James Robert.

 Russell was a member and a deacon of the Eastside Baptist Church, and it was here that his funeral was held in January 1981.  He was buried in the Ebenezer Cemetery in ground that once belonged to his father, G.B.I. and in sight of the old homeplace.  He had lived his entire life in Rusk County and had been married for fifty-one years.

 At the time of this writing, October, 1981, of G.B.I.’s thirteen children, only two are still living, Foster Porter and Roxy Lou Porter Parmley.

 Submitted by Kathy Porter