Huntingdon's State Fire Marshal

G. Chal Port was born in Huntingdon on November 25, 1873, and educated in the Huntingdon schools and at State College. He served as a school director and on the borough council, then was chosen coroner and finally sheriff. For years he sat on the Republican state committee from Huntingdon County and chaired the party's county committee.

Until he became fire marshal he served in the Pennsylvania Railroad police, part of that time as captain of the Middle Division force. In June 1916 Governor Brumbaugh appointed Captain Port State Fire Marshal, an office that paid $5,000 a year. He took the oath of office and stepped into the job once he had closed his work with the railroad.

The Harrisburg Telegraph later wrote that his long police experience was placed at the disposal of the national government's war work, and that modesty kept him from telling of the things he had done to head off alien plots in the state after the war began.

His health gave way again early in the summer of 1918. He spent some time at his summer home along the Juniata until he became so ill that he was taken to Philadelphia, and he died in a hospital there on October 5, 1918, after an illness of many weeks.

The funeral was held at Huntingdon on the afternoon of October 8, and his department in Harrisburg closed for the day. It came in the middle of the influenza epidemic. People who attended said men left business and work to attend the public services in spite of the influenza order.

Governor Brumbaugh chose another Huntingdon man to succeed him, Howard E. Butz, who the Democratic Watchman said had been a boyhood friend of both the governor and Port.

Checked 2026-10-31 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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