Eleazer Porter (1698-1757) was born in Hadley, Massachusetts in 1698. His parents were Samuel and Johannah (Cook) Porter. The ninth of 13 children, Eleazer grew up within the large and extended family network of Connecticut River Valley families to which the Porters belonged, ofter referred to as Mansion People, or River Gods. He married Sarah Pitkin in 1771 and they would have 11 children. Eleazer attained the title "Honorable" by serving for a number of years as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and as a Judge of Probate. He died in 1757, aged 59. His widow, Sarah, survived him by over 25 years, dying in 1784.
Sylvester Judd identified Eleazer Porter as Hadley's wealthiest resident in the early history of the town (Sylvester Judd, History of Hadley (second edition, Springfield, MA: H.R. Huntting & Co., 1905), p. 331. Porter enslaved at least eight people. Surviving pages from Dr. Richard Crouch's accounts document treatment for Scipio, Boston, Boston's son Joshua, and Adam in addition to numerous references to treating Porter's "Negro Man", "Negro" and "Negro Boy". (Account book of Dr. Richard Crouch, from microfilm at PVMA Library; original held by Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts; Robert H. Romer, Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts (Florence, MA: Levelers Press, 2009) pp. 180.) A deed for the sale of land in neighboring Sunderland to Adam in 1767 includes the information that Adam was "the Late Negro Servant of Eleazr Porter Esq. who is now Manumitted & resides at Hadley". (see Romer, Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts, pp. 181-182 for a transcript and image of the deed.)
The probate inventory taken after Porter's death named six enslaved people: Thankful, Tabitha, Agnes, Boston, Boston's son Joshua, and Simon. While little is known of Thankful, Tabitha, Agnes, and Simon besides their appearing as property in Eleazer's inventory, Boston was likely the Boston named in a divorce granted to another African American resident, Ralph Way, in 1752 on the grounds that Way's wife, Lois, had had an extra-marital affair with Boston resulting in a child. (Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England (NY: Columbia University Press, 1942), p. 206; see also Judd, History of Hadley, p. 247). Surviving records reveal that Joshua Boston was free and farming in Hadley by the eve of the American Revolution as well as working as a hired laborer for other residents. A Revolutionary War veteran, he died in 1819. (Marla R. Miller, Joshua Boston of Hadley.)
operson_detail.html