Daily AncestorPorter
A porter carried baggage or goods for others, at a station, hotel, store or warehouse; in some places a porter also kept the door of a building.
The word comes from Latin portare, to carry. American porters carried luggage at railroad stations, where they became known as redcaps, worked as hotel bellhops, or moved stock in stores and warehouses. A second, separate sense is a doorkeeper.
The 1900 census instructions asked enumerators to tell a porter from a helper and to add the business, as in porter, rubber goods, and the 1940 examples include porter, retail men's clothing.
As seen in a recordOccupation and industry columns of the 1910 to 1940 census
Wm. Johnson, 40, Porter, Railroad station
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Daily Ancestor. "Porter." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/porter. Last checked 2026-10-10.