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Porter of Norfolk and Liverpool

See here for the Colley family

Thomas Porter (1732-1812), Quartermaster

The Custom House was a 19th-century Neo-classical building located in Liverpool, England. It housed a post office, dock office, and offices for Customs and Excise. It was built on the site of the historic Old Dock in 1839 and operated up to World War II when it was partly destroyed during the Liverpool Blitz, then finally demolished in 1948.

Thomas Porter (1732-1812) was born at Hindolveston, Norfolk, the son of Mr T Porter. His ancestors are assumed to include Samuel Porter (b.c. 1688 Banningham, Norfolk m. Grace Moy) and Samuel’s son John Porter (b. 22 September 1723 Hindolveston m. Mary Barcham). There is also a Thomas Porter buried in Fozley, who died on 10 October 1705, aged 71. The Porters of Hindolveston bore arms – three bells argent, on a shield sable, with a crest of portcullis.

Mr T. Porter, his father, “was married secondly to a lady of Dutch extraction who persuaded her husband to cut off the entail, & secured all the possessions for her own son, who squandered everything in riotous living and was before his death at the age of 25, supported by his half-brother Thomas. Thomas enlisted when quite a youth, and his father, seeing he was bent on being a soldier, bought him a commission.” (That said, as Nick Drummond observes, he was a serjeant major, so no commission was bought.) His regiment was stationed at Blackburn, and while there, he met Rebecca Fish, whom he married; her father was one of the ejected ministers in the Church of Scotland.”

He was quartermaster of the 20^th Foot (now the Lancashire Fusiliers). Wellington’s Peninsular War campaign was famously well provisioned unlike most armies. Did he keep it in the family? With thew 20^th, Thomas took part in the battle of Minden in 1759 in which the regiment “were a single line of infantry and broke through three lines of cavalry…and tumbled them to ruin”. Here he was so badly wounded that he was left for dead upon the field. Some one who came on the field for the purpose of robbing the dead found him to be alive and, by some sign discovered that he was a freemason, took Thomas home and nursed him. It was a year before his friends knew that he was alive. They had supposed him to be dead and put on mourning.

Thomas Porter, after he left the army, settled in Liverpool and started his painting business there. “Brother Thomas” is recorded by the Merchants’ Lodge in Liverpool as one of its founders in 1780.

He was three times married. By his third marriage in 1778 to a widow, Mrs Mary Tudor (née Colley) (1748–1831), he had at least two children: Thomas Colley Porter (1780–1833), who became Mayor of Liverpool (1827–28), and Elizabeth, who married Captain Cririe, RN. Thomas Colley Porter (1780-1833) was great-grandfather of the author of above statements, Lt. Col. W. Keats.

Thomas Porter died on Tuesday 22 September 1812, aged 81. [1]

Mary Colley’s mother was a Carpenter, or Charpentier, of Hertfordshire, a once powerful family who came to England with the Conqueror. Family tradition held that this family bore arms with three red stripes and three white crosses, said to commemorate their presence on the field at Hastings and crusade service, although this has not been verified in standard heraldic references. Are the 3 swans from the Colley arms? John Carpenter, Mary’s grandfather, was High Sheriff for Hertfordshire in 1711 and died aged 48. Mary’s mother was one of his youngest children and died aged 90 in 1812.

Thomas Colley Porter (1780–1833), Mayor of Liverpool

Born in 1780, this young gentleman was appointed a lieutenant of the Liverpool Volunteers in September 1798.[2] He developed his Liverpool painting and plumbing firm into a white‑lead manufacturing business on Mill Lane, later part of Great Howard Street. From 1827 until his death, he lived in a substantial town house on St Anne (later Mansfield) Street, which afterwards served as judges’ lodgings. Porter Street in Liverpool was later named in his honour.

A Whig in Liverpool politics, he was elected Mayor in 1827 after a six‑day poll in which he defeated Nicholas Robinson by 1,780 votes to 1,765 in what Margaret Escott has called “the most expensive, venal and violent mayoral contest” in the town’s history up to that date; both sides spent heavily on bribery, with individual votes fetching between £6 and £50.

On 12 August 1828, as mayor, he laid the foundation stone of Liverpool’s new Custom House, an event marked by boat races and fireworks and remembered in later accounts of the building. He died at Aigburth Hall, Lancashire, on 2 October 1833, in the 54th year.

In 1837, his second daughter Mary Colley Porter was wed at Childwall Church to R. S. Christian, solicitor, son of the late George Christian, esq. of Everton. [3] His fourth daughter Annie Wilson Porter was married in 1845 to James Macalister, Esq, of Glasgow. [4]

Elizabeth ffoliott, daughter of Thomas Porter of Liverpool and granddaughter of Thomas Colley Porter, the Mayor, died in April 1902.[5]

With thanks to Nick and Delia Drummond.