Two Porters as translators of the Kalevala
As it happens there are two professors Porter connected with the English translations of the Kalevala, and furthermore, both were chemists and born in 1822.
Thomas Conrad Porter (1822–1901) was a professor of chemistry, zoology and botany at the Franklin & Marshall College. The other Porter, John Addison Porter (1822–1866), on the other hand, was a chemistry professor at Yale University.
Apparently the two Porters did not know each other, but both knew the Finnish engineer and writer August Fredrik Soldan (1817–1885), who lived in the United States in 1849–1858. Both were interested in the Kalevala and translated it using Schiefner’s German translation as their source.
Juhani Aho was A. F. Soldan’s son-in-law and he has written a biography of Soldan Aatteiden mies: piirteitä August Frederik Soldanin elämästä (1901). The book reveals that also Aho thought that the two Porters were the same person (p. 216–217)! The biography was published 16 years after Soldan had died and, thus, Soldan was not able to correct the mistake.
Finally, it has to be pointed out that there were even more Porters involved in this phase of translating the Kalevala. Eugene Schuyler continued John Addison Porter’s work with the Kalevala after Porter’s death. Ernest John Moyne, who has studied the translations of the Kalevala on the American continent, states that J. A. Porter was Schuyler’s teacher. Nonetheless, this seems odd, because Schuyler studied law and J. A. Porter was a professor of chemistry and agriculture. However, at this time, there was another professor with the same name working at Yale. Eugene Schuyler worked as an assistant to professor Noah Porter in the Webster’s dictionary project.
From Ernest John Moyne: “Kalevalan käännökset Amerikassa” – Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 29. Helsinki: WSOY. 1949.