Porter's Path to South America: Lecture Explores Local Influences on His Expedition

Your financial contribution empowers watchdog reporting that protects and informs us all. DECORAH — To mark the centenary of Bert and Grace Porter's expedition to South America in 1925 to collect butterflies and moths, David Faldet will lecture on two local explorers who inspired the Porters. Bert Porter was a cousin to Sumner Matteson: a photographer, bicycle sales representative and traveling correspondent whose photographs, taken between 1888 and 1920, chronicled social life of indigenous peoples in the American West, Mexico, and Cuba. His other ther subjects include workers up and down the Pacific Coast, and of everyday experience in Decorah and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Matteson died while climbing a Mexican volcano, five years before Porter's South American trip. Porter's second local inspiration was Edward Holway, a banker from the same social group as the grandparents who raised Porter. The year Porter was married, Holway retired from banking and moved to Minneapolis, where he became a professor of botany at the University of Minnesota. Well known for his collecting expeditions and his skill as a mountaineer, Holway's early love of plants and plant collecting led to his becoming a world expert on rust fungi. Holway's mountaineering skills allowed him to collect plants and fungi in remote reaches of Canada, the U.S.A., and both Central and South America. A peak in Canada is named after him. He died in 1923, two years before Porter's trip. Faldet has previously lectured on Porter's local photography, notable early women of Decorah, and spiritualism in the era of the Porters. The lecture will be given twice, at 6:00 and 7:30 p.m. on Thursday March 13 at the Porter House Museum, 401 W. Broadway. It is free and open to the public. Feed your curiosity! Subscribe to the free newsletter and indulge in all that's local. Your friends will be impressed.