Porter, Eliza Emily Chappell
Eliza Emily Chappell Porter Soundex Code P636
Mrs. Eliza Emily Chappell Porter Teacher
Eliza Emily Chappell Porter (Thursday, November 5, 1807 – Sunday, January 1, 1888) was an American educator who was the first Chicago teacher paid by public funds in the middle 1800s. Mrs. Chappell was born Eliza Emily Chappell in Geneseo, New York. She was only sixteen when she began her teaching career and over the course of her life helped establish schools in almost every region of the United States.
Ms. Chappell opened a school for small children in Rochester, New York in 1828. In 1831, she traveled to Michigan and began tutoring at a frontier settlement on Mackinac Island. After a few months Ms. Chappell helped established schools in Chicago in 1833.
Eliza traveled to Chicago where she opened a school for mixed-raced Indian children.
On Monday, June 15, 1835, Eliza married the Reverend Jeremiah Porter. Eliza and Jeremiah first met on Mackinac Island during discussions about establishing a school.
Eliza was always a thin, frail woman. She was able to overcome neuralgia and lost most of her teeth, but not her sense of humor. When she traveled to New York to meet her future in-laws, her mother-in-law remarked "Oh! What can such a poor little hand do?"
After the Porters were married, they left Chicago for Farmington, Illinois. They moved to Peoria, Illinois, before settling in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday, January 4, 1851; they remained there until 1858. The Porters returned to Chicago because Jeremiah had become the pastor of Edwards Congregational Church.
Then the Civil War broke out.
Eliza became Director of the U.S Sanitary Commission (1861-1862), where her main job was to solicit, collect, and distribute food and medical supplies for the Union Army.
Mrs. Porter helped organize hospitals and directed the work of caring of casualties from the Battle of Shiloh. She was also instrumental in recruiting volunteer nurses for hospitals in Savannah, Georgia and Memphis, Tennessee where she established a school for African American children.
This outstanding woman later joined Mother Mary Ann Bickerdyke in Chattanooga, Tennessee to care for soldiers wounded during General William Tecumseh Sherman March to Atlanta, Georgia. Throughout the Civil War, Mrs. Chappell Porter inspected hospitals and continued to open schools in Oklahoma, Wyoming and Texas.
