She was born on August 16, 1813 in Farmington, Connecticut, United States, of which town her paternal ancestor, Robert Porter, had been one of the original proprietors in 1640. She was the third of the seven children of Rev. Noah Porter, for more than sixty years pastor of the Farmington Congregational Church, and of Mehetabel, daughter of Giles Meigs of Middletown, Connecticut. Of the seven children in the Porter household, Noah, afterwards president of Yale College, and Sarah were nearest in age and were closely united in intellectual sympathy.
Education
Her early schooling was obtained at Mr. Hart's Academy in Farmington, where she pursued the same studies in the same way as her three brothers, who all went to Yale. A year (1832) spent in New Haven at the school of Professor Andrews, the Latinist, was the only opportunity afforded her for study away from home and gave her a foundation on which she was able to build the self-directed studies of her later years. It resulted, also, in her becoming acquainted with members of the Yale faculty and acquiring a useful familiarity with the thought and life of a college town.
Career
In the decade following her New Haven experience, she did her first teaching - in Springfield, Massachussets, Philadelphia, and Buffalo successively - always continuing her studies and in particular devoting herself to German, which was to be of the greatest importance in her intellectual development.
Returning to Farmington, in 1843, she opened a day school for the girls of the village. Almost at once she was urged to make provision for a few boarding pupils - and thus began Miss Porter's School.
Until the last few years of her life she taught Greek, Latin, French, German, literature, history, "moral philosophy, " or mathematics, as the case might be; yet her teaching and the routine business of the school never exhausted all her energy. She always prosecuted her own studies and her own reading and kept in touch with the intellectual movement of the world by contact with distinguished scholars and authors, many of whom (John Fiske, for example) came yearly to visit in the home where she lived with her sisters and to give lectures at her school.
She died in Farmington.
Achievements
Sarah Porter founded Miss Porter's School, a private college preparatory school for girls. As the number of pupils increased, she gradually acquired additional land and buildings in the center of the town, and until her death her personality was the dominant feature of the school and of its life. She was also a well-known opponent of women's suffrage but promoted other legal reforms for women.
Views
She felt, that she should awaken her pupils, while in her care, to true intellectual effort, to self-direction, to a sense of responsibility for others; and in so awakening them she was successful.
Personality
Clearness of mind, power of thought, calmness of judgment, strength of constitution, were parts of her inheritance from her father. From her mother came a vivacity and an optimism somewhat lacking in the Porter temperament. Without this Meigs inheritance she would hardly have been able to touch by her understanding sympathy her innumerable pupils.
Quotes from others about the person
Shortly after her death, Prof. George Trumbull Ladd of Yale said of her, "I remember Miss Porter as in her mental equipment, mental habits and attainments, the most magnificent example of symmetrical womanhood that I have ever known. "
