Huntingdon borough

Horace Porter

Did you know? Horace Porter was born in Huntingdon on 15 April 1837, and he has a Medal of Honor.

He earned it at Chickamauga on 20 September 1863, as a captain in the Ordnance Department. The official citation is nine lines and worth reading whole: “While acting as a volunteer aide, at a critical moment when the lines were broken, rallied enough fugitives to hold the ground under heavy fire long enough to effect the escape of wagon trains and batteries.”

He did not receive it for another thirty-nine years. The medal was presented on 8 July 1902, when Porter was sixty-five and serving as the United States ambassador to France.

In between he had been personal secretary to President Ulysses S. Grant, and he rose to brevet brigadier general. He died in New York in 1921. His Medal of Honor is still in existence, held in Special Collections at the Georgetown University Libraries.

From the record

Passages about this subject, quoted from county histories now in the public domain. Each one names the book and the position in the text so it can be checked. Spelling is as printed.

George Strunk, died in 1902, at Lewistown, unmarried. He was a retired coal and lumber dealer; member of the Pennsylvania house of assembly in 1886; chief burgess of Lewistown, and a prominent Odd Fellow. 3. William Horace, died in October, 1903. He was a partner with his brother, George S., in the coal and lumber firm of Hoffman & Sons, from which he retired in 1901. 4. Ella M., died aged six years. (IV) Henry Clay, eldest son of William Boyer and Frances (Strunk) Hoffman, was bom in Granville township, MifHin county, Pennsylvania, March 24, 1841. He was educated in the public schools and Lewistown Academy, beginning business life as clerk in a general store. Later he engaged in the milling business at ReedsviUe, continuing several years, then in the same business at Milroy four years. About 1896 he returned to Lewistown, where he engaged in the coal and lumber business with M. W. Brandt anad is still so engaged. He is a Progressive in politics, but has never accepted office. He is a veteran of the civil war, in which he enlisted August 23, 1862, Company D, 131st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, serving nine months as hospital steward. He was honorably discharged May 23, 1863. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and served two terms as commander of Colonel Huling Post, No. 176. He is a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Lewistown. Mr.John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 1,155,893 of the scanned text

Checked against the record. SOURCE UPGRADED from Wikipedia to the official recipient record, and everything the page already claimed survives. CONFIRMED: born 15 April 1837 at Huntingdon, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania; Medal of Honor for action at Chickamauga, Georgia on 20 September 1863; the action itself, rallying broken troops under fire. The record gives the citation verbatim, so the page now quotes it instead of paraphrasing, and the paraphrase was leaving out the point of the action: the ground was held long enough to get the wagon trains and the batteries away. ADDED from the record. His rank at Chickamauga was CAPTAIN, in the Ordnance Department; brevet brigadier general was his highest rank later, and the page had been carrying only the eventual rank. The medal was presented on 8 July 1902, thirty-nine years after the action. He died 29 May 1921 in New York and is buried at West Branch Cemetery, New Jersey. The medal itself is in Special Collections at the Georgetown University Libraries. One nuance the record carries and the page does not need to hide: his service was CREDITED to Harrisburg, Dauphin County. He was born in Huntingdon; the credit is an administrative fact about where he was accounted for, not about where he came from. The ambassadorship to France, 1897 to 1905, was already checked in an earlier pass and is unchanged.

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