Porterfield, Emmett

PORTERFIELD

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 6/13/2021 at 17:17:05

EMMETT PORTERFIELD
born Nov 12, 1857, Ohio

Emmett Porterfield, M.D., a successful and popular physician of Indianola, Iowa, was born in Belmont county, Ohio, November 12, 1857, the eldest of the seven children of Joseph and Agnes (Tipton) Porterfield, natives also of eastern Ohio. The father was engaged in business in that State for many years, and moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, in 1882, dying there in middle life. The boyhood of Emmett Porterfield was spent in the State of his birth, where he attended the common schools, and later he received an academic course. From 1877 to 1880 he was engaged in teaching, and during that time began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. J. N. McMaster, of Demos, Ohio. He afterward entered the Columbus Medical College, at Columbus, remaining there two years, and in 1882 he went to New York city to enter Bellevue Hospital Medical College, graduating at that institution in the following year. He then engaged in the practice of his profession in Spring Hill, Iowa, up to July 1, 1895, at which time he moved to Indianola, on account of his recent appointment, at the head camp of the Modern Woodmen of America, held at Madison, Wisconsin, in June, 1895, as one of the five head physicians of the order. The Doctor removed to Indianola, for the better means of communication which that place affords. The jurisdiction of this great beneficial order extends from the Ohio river to Colorado and from Canada to the thirty-eighth parallel, exclusive of cities of over 200,000 population. The responsibilities of the office are many, it being the work of Dr. Porterfield and his associates to commission local medical examiners, and to pass upon the application of every candidate for admission into the order, to accept or reject each risk according to their best judgment.
The Doctor was married May 13, 1886, to Miss Mattie F. Thornborough, a native of Belmont county, Ohio, and a daughter of George Thornborough, a native of England. His family came to this country in an early day, locating in eastern Ohio, where the father is still living, the mother having died in 1876. Dr. and Mrs. Porterfield have four children: Herbert D., aged eight years; Lois Evaline, five years; Edmund, two years; and Doratha, aged three months (November 1895). The Doctor is a member of the State Medical Society, of the Des Moines District Medical Society, of the Warren County Medical Society, is Worshipful Master of Champion Lodge, No. 233, F. & A. M., of Spring Hill, and for the past eight years has been a member of the Woodmen of America, Camp 517, of Spring Hill, Iowa. Dr. Porterfield is essentially a self-made man. Ambitious, able, possessed of a courage which insures success, he is one of the valued citizens of Warren county. Source: A Memorial and Biographical Record of Iowa, Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1896, vol.1, p.412