FROM THE MAGNOLIA MONTHLY: JUDGE A.L. PORTER

Wakulla County Courthouse after it was completed in 1949.

By ELIZABETH SMITH

(An excerpt from the article “Judge A. L. Porter” from the September 1964 Magnolia Monthly written by Elizabeth Smith.)

When he came to Wakulla County, Judge Porter had always intended to go back to Texas, but when people knew he had taken law he was asked to take the Florida bar exams. He took the exams with 500 other applicants and passed them. Then the chairman of the board of county commissioners sought him for the office of prosecuting attorney, a job he took even though the schoolboard offered him a higher salary for the next year with time off for the days court was in session.
Judge Porter was the county attorney from June 1926 to June 1932, when Governor Doyle Carleton appointed him the county judge, which he served until 1960, when he declined to run again, and the office was won by George Harper of Crawfordville.
As an attorney, the judge remembers one incident with humor, tho it didn’t seem funny at the time it happened. He was prosecuting 3 men for butchering a cow they had stolen.  They had buried all the unusable parts and a deputy had found the remains and made a case out of it. The judge had vigorously attended the case and he thought the defendants, especially one big red-headed man, would resent his prosecution and fight.
After the case was over, and the judge had just got out of bed from an attack of influenza, he met the red-headed fellow on the steps of the courthouse one morning casually sharpening a ten-inch knife on the sole of his shoe. He said to the judge, “Will you step around the corner a minute? Id’s like to talk to you.” Trembling halfway from the flu, and halfway from the invitation, Judge Porter said, “Just a minute, I have to go to the courthouse a moment.” The fellow agreed and the judge went into the sheriff’s office (the sheriff was L. I. Cooper) and asked to borrow his gun. The sheriff wouldn’t let him have it, and the Judge didn’t want to tell him why, so he went back out of the door shaking in anticipation. When he got around the corner of the building, the fellow stood there with his knife in his hand and said, “I just wanted to tell you that so-and-so has owed me $7.50 for the past 3 months for some work I done for him and I wonder if you’d collect it for me.”
Among his other public duties, the judge was a school trustee in the late 1920’s and early 1930s when the schools were a group of one-room buildings scattered all over the woods. He helped consolidate the Crawfordville school which had 3 rooms, and the people said he wouldn’t be able to fill them all up in 40 years.
During the Depression the problem of public works came up, and under the Civil Works Administration the county trustees and the state planning commission couldn’t decide on whether to build public schools or public roads. The county board at that time was composed of F. B. Becton, Sopchoppy, S. W. Revell, Sopchoppy, L. L. Pararo, Crawfordville, Walter Page Sr., Wakulla, and the judge. They argued all of one day with one of the planning commissioners in Tallahassee, a former road supervisor, because Wakulla County wanted more schools instead of roads. One of the older men on the commission finally said, “If they want schools, give ’em schools. They can’t do a d—n thing for fellow like me but they can do something for the rising generation.”
So Crawfordville and Sopchoppy got the schools they have now. The job was supposed to be remodeling the old buildings, but Crawfordville’s remodeling resulted in quadrupling the size of the former school and the only original part left were the window sashes in one of the classrooms. People said the new building wouldn’t be filled up with kids for a century.
During the Depression Judge Porter also served on the council of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration as treasurer. The money for local work came from Tallahassee at irregular intervals. He remembers that men would walk 5 to 10 miles to work for $1 a day. A sewing room was set up in a building behind Moody Pearce’s old house so women could work. A ditching program to control mosquitoes was instituted, and outhouses on cement foundations were erected.
Judge Porter remembers that when he came to Wakulla County there was no electricity except for people who had Delco plants (A Delco Plant was a generator that ran on kerosene and was hooked to a series of batteries such as those found in a car.) People went by ferry over the Ochlocknee River to Carrabelle.
Judge Porter married Hazel Harvey of Crawfordville in 1927. They have one son, Bob, who works for the State Board of Prisons. The judge is listed in the “Who’s Who in the South and Southwest”, was president of the Chamber of Commerce for 3 years, president of the Second Judicial Bar Association, and a member of the Wakulla County Welfare Association and the American Legion.
The judge is gratified at the improvement in law observance in the county since he first came here. He thinks the improvement in juvenile delinquency is spectacular because juvenile crime is increasing in the rest of the nation. He thinks that the schools, churches, and economic improvements have helped the children locally. The judge has always wanted peoples’ respect and confidence and he feels that he has got more than he has been entitled to. He feels that people in Wakulla County have been especially good to newcomers. He knows, because one he was one.