The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.
Benjamin Franklin Porter was born in Tennessee and grew up in Texas. According to biographer Samuel Armor, “He was a plantation holder in that commonwealth [Texas], and was therefore always a man of influence.”
He migrated to the area that would become Fullerton in 1870 on a wagon train. There he bought 40 acres of land on the north side of Orangethrope Avenue, west of Euclid Avenue, where he and his wife raised 15 children.
According to local historian Bob Ziebell, “Fullerton’s first settlers located in an area which was originally known as ‘North Anaheim’ along Orangethrope Avenue, mostly west of Spadra Road (now Harbor) and extending west to what is now Brookhurst. These pioneers of the late 1860s first sent their children to Anaheim schools, and then to Orangethorpe School after that district was organized in 1872.
Ziebell writes, “On the land next to the Porters, a man named John Kerr built a home in 1882, which was later owned by the Almon Goodwins, then the Greenoughs, and then, from 1919 to 1984, by Benjamin Franklin Porter’s son Rufus, and grandson, Stanley–which is now recognized as the oldest extant house in Fullerton, located at 771 West Orangethorpe Avenue.”
Porter was very involved in the community. He helped establish the Orangethorpe School in 1872 (before Fullerton was a town), and later Fullerton High School in 1893.
Being a farmer, he helped lead the Anaheim Union Water Company, and “was active in Democratic politics and banking, serving at the time of his death as a director of the Fullerton branch of the Security-First National Trust and Savings Bank,” according to Ziebell.
He died in 1941. His obituary in the Fullerton News-Tribune read, in part “He had been active throughout his life in the development of this district. Its first roads, first high school, irrigation systems and walnut marketing co-operatives all benefitted by his wise and willing counsel.”
B.F. Porter’s son C. George Porter was born in Orangethorpe (now a part of Fullerton), in 1875.
He was married in 1898 to Jane Jennings, who died in 1917 leaving one child, Charles Jr.
C. George continued in the family ranching business, with a Valencia orange grove. He attended Orangethorpe school and later the Los Angeles Business College. Porter branched his businesses out into both oil and real estate in Orange County.
In 1919, C. George married Alta Rose Rhodes. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge of Fullerton and a Democrat.
Fullerton History 