John Porter was born in 1605 and married Margaret, a woman who had been first married to a Mr. Odding, with whom she had a daughter, Sarah Odding. With Margaret he had only one daughter, Hannah. The family emigrated to New England in 1633. He and Margaret were listed of members of the church at Roxbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and then moved to Boston, where the Antinomian Controversy - a debate over grace vs. works, led to him and others leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony and buying land in the place now called Rhode Island. There they started a new colony, under the Portsmouth Compact, which John and 22 other men signed on July 8, 1663. It is said that when he moved to his new land, he left Margaret behind and she had to sue him for support, which he was ordered to pay and did. He later had a relationship with Herodias Long, the zealous Quaker and former common-law wife of George Gardiner. John gave large farms of several hundred acres to her sons, and possibly daughters. Both of Porter's daughters married signers of the Portsmouth Compact. His step-daughter, Sarah Odding, married Philip Sherman, and his daughter, Hannah, married Samuel Wilbore. He died sometime after April 25, 1674.

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