About the book

The Porterfields was compiled by Frank Burke Porterfield and published in 1948 by Southeastern Press, Inc. of Roanoke, Virginia. It's 344 pages of Porterfield history starts with the original Porterfields in Scotland. According to this publication, the first of the many Porterfields was John Porterfield of Porterfield whose lands in Scotland were confirmed to him on February 3, 1460.

Just like many genealogical compilations, this book is known to have errors. For example, Harvey D. Porterfield is listed on page 110 as born in 1805 and his year of death is shown as 1853. Later, on page 123, his year of death is stated as 1953. Obviously, he did not live to be nearly 150 years, so this second entry is a typographical error. Other errors include the omission of parts of families. My great-great-great-great-grandfather is listed in the book with five children. Missing from this list is his oldest child (his only daughter) and his youngest son, my ancestor.

However, the book remains a good tool for Porterfield researchers. But the lack of an index of names makes it difficult to lookup people in the book. I have spent hours reading back through pages I have read before, trying to help someone find a Porterfield or related ancestor.

The Index - Why and How

This book, as originally published, does not contain an index to the names in the book. I have been told that someone has done a re-print of the book which does contain an index, although the paging of the re-print is different from the original. After responding to many inquiries to lookup names in this book (the hard way), I decided to create my own index.

As I started this project, I decided to index exactly what was in the book. Since many names are repeated in different generations, this index uses names (last and given) and years of birth & death to identify each person. I used the dates and names as they are printed in the book, even if research has developed different information since 1948. For example, the two different years of death for Harvey Porterfield mentioned elsewhere on this web site results in two entries for him in this index.

Here are a few ground rules that I used in compiling this index.

• If the last name is known, but not the first name, I entered "(male)" or "(female)" for the first name.
• In the two cases where the last name is not known, I entered "(unknown)."
• The index begins with page 87 of the book which is Chapter 5, Cumberland County Porterfields. I may add the front part of the book, which deals mostly with the Porterfields before America, at a later time.