View source for Noah Porter

{{Short description|American minister, academic, philosopher, author and anti-slavery activist}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2013}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| honorific-prefix = [[The Reverend]]
| name        = Noah Porter
| image       = Noah Porter, Memories of Yale life and men, 1854-1899 (1903) (14766521311).jpg
|order    = 11th
| title       = [[List of Presidents of Yale University|President]] of [[Yale University]]
| term_start  = 1871
| term_end    = 1886
| predecessor = [[Theodore Dwight Woolsey]]
| successor   = [[Timothy Dwight V]]
| birth_name  = Noah Porter Jr.
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1811|12|14}}
| birth_place = [[Farmington, Connecticut]]
| death_date  = {{death date and age|1892|3|4|1811|12|14}}
| death_place = [[New Haven, Connecticut]]
| alma_mater  = [[Yale University|Yale College]]
| signature   = Signature of Noah Thomas Porter III (1811–1892).png
}}
[[File:Porter Gate at Yale University.jpg|thumb|right|Noah Porter Gates at [[Yale University]]]]
'''Noah Thomas Porter III''' (December 14, 1811 – March 4, 1892)<ref name=YaleObit>''Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University'', Yale University, 1891-2, New Haven, pp. 82-83.</ref> was an American [[Congregational church|Congregational]] minister, academic, philosopher, author, [[lexicographer]] and an outspoken anti-slavery activist. [[Porter Mountain]], of the Adirondack Mountains, was named for him after he was the first to climb it in 1875. He was [[List of Presidents of Yale University|President]] of [[Yale College]] (1871–1886).<ref>Welch, Lewis ''et al.'' (1899). [https://books.google.com/books?id=V8wWAAAAIAAJ&dq=Yale+and+Noah+Porter&pg=PA445  ''Yale, Her Campus, Class-rooms, and Athletics,'' p. 445.]</ref>

==Biography==
He was born to Noah Porter Jr. (1781–1866) (one of the first ministers of First Church of Christ, Congregational in [[Farmington, Connecticut]]) and his wife, born Mehitable Meigs, in Farmington, Connecticut, on December 14, 1811. His younger sister was [[Sarah Porter]], founder of [[Miss Porter's School]], a college preparatory school for girls.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.firstchurch1652.org/content.cfm?id=2056 | title=First Church 1652 Farmington - History in Brief }}</ref> He graduated in 1831 from Yale College, where he was a member of the [[Linonian Society]]. On April 13, 1836, in New Haven, he married Mary Taylor, daughter of [[Nathaniel William Taylor|Nathaniel Taylor]]<ref name=YaleObit/> (who presided over the creation of the [[Yale Divinity School]] and created what came to be known as "[[New Haven theology]]") and his wife Rebecca Marie Hine.  They had several children, and two daughters survived them.

He was ordained as a [[Congregational church|Congregational]] minister in [[New Milford, Connecticut]], from 1836 to 1843. He served as pastor at a Congregational Church in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]], from 1843 to 1846.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-9/Noah-Porter.html | title=Noah Porter }}</ref> He was elected professor of [[moral philosophy]] and [[metaphysics]] at Yale in 1846.

Porter was inaugurated as President of Yale College on Wednesday, October 11, 1871.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_1QUAAAAAYAAJ ''Addresses at the Inauguration of Professor Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., as President of Yale College,''p. 3.]</ref> He continued to serve as head of the college until 1886.

Porter edited several editions of [[Webster's Dictionary]], and wrote on education.<ref>{{cite book |title= An American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster, LL.D. Thoroughly Revised, and Greatly Enlarged and Improved, by Chauncey A. Goodrich, D.D., and Noah Porter, D.D.  |publisher= G.& S. Merriam |place= Springfield, MASS |year= 1865 |access-date=February 16, 2018  |url= https://archive.org/stream/americandictiona00websuoft#page/n9/mode/2up |via= Internet Archive }}</ref>

Influenced by the German refugee writer and philosopher [[Francis Lieber]], Porter opposed slavery and integrated an antislavery position with religious liberalism.

He was a frequent visitor to the [[Adirondack Mountains]] of New York, and in 1875 was among the first recorded to make an ascent of the peak later named [[Porter Mountain]] in his honor.

His best-known work is ''The Human Intellect'', with an ''Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul'' (1868), comprehending a general history of philosophy, and following in part the "common-sense" philosophy of the [[Scottish Common Sense Realism|Scottish school]], while accepting the [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] [[Transcendental idealism|doctrine of intuition]], and declaring the notion of design to be ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]''. Of great importance were two other works, ''Elements of Intellectual Science'' (1871) and ''Elements of Moral Science'' (1885).

He died on March 4, 1892, in [[New Haven, Connecticut|New Haven]],<ref name=YaleObit/> and was buried in the [[Grove Street Cemetery]] there.

==Notes==
{{reflist|1}}

==References==
* Kelley, Brooks Mather. (1999). [https://books.google.com/books?id=B2aDRhohtx8C  ''Yale: A History.''] New Haven: [[Yale University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-300-07843-5}}; [http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/810552  OCLC 810552]
* Levesque, George. “Noah Porter Revisited,” ''History of Higher Education Annual,'' 26 (2007), 29–66.
* Welch, Lewis Sheldon and Walter Camp. (1899). [https://books.google.com/books?id=V8wWAAAAIAAJ  ''Yale, Her Campus, Class-rooms, and Athletics.''] Boston: L. C. Page and Co. [http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/2191518  OCLC 2191518]
{{EB1911|wstitle=Porter, Noah|volume=22|page=116}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Noah Porter}}
{{wikiquote}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20081121205225/http://antislavery.eserver.org/religious/portercivilliberty/portercivilliberty.html Civil Liberty: A Sermon], from the Antislavery Literature Project
*[https://archive.org/details/humanintellect00portuoft The Human Intellect: With an Introduction upon Psychology and the Soul] via Google Books.
* {{Librivox author|id=18517}}
*[[Charles Sanders Peirce|Peirce, C. S.]] (1869), "Professor Porter's ''Human Intellect''" (review), ''[[The Nation]]'' 8, 211–13 (March 18, 1869). Peirce Edition Project [http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_24/v2_24.htm Eprint].

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{{succession box | title=[[University President|President]] of [[Yale University|Yale College]] | before=[[Theodore Dwight Woolsey]] | after=[[Timothy Dwight V]] | years=1871–1886}}
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{{Yale University presidents}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Porter, Noah}}
[[Category:1811 births]]
[[Category:1892 deaths]]
[[Category:Yale College alumni]]
[[Category:Presidents of Yale University]]
[[Category:People from Farmington, Connecticut]]
[[Category:Burials at Grove Street Cemetery]]
[[Category:19th-century American philosophers]]
[[Category:19th-century American Congregationalist ministers]]
[[Category:19th-century American lexicographers]]