Note 74 — Evans’s Pedestrious Tour of Four Thousand Miles—1818 (continued 2)

Augustus Porter, brother of General Peter Porter, was born at Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1769. When twenty years of age, he left home for western New-York, becoming a surveyor in the Phelps and Gorham Tract, and later in the Holland Purchase. In 1806, he removed with his family to Niagara Falls, where he continued to reside until his death in 1825. In association with three others, he formed the Portage Company, which leased from the state for fifteen years the exclusive privilege of transporting property across the portage between Lewiston and Schlosser. He was the first judge of Niagara County, opening his first term at Buffalo in 1808. The unusual length of his life enabled him to see the country, through which he had travelled for days without meeting a white man, develop into a populous agricultural and commercial region.—Ed.