Porter is a town in Niagara County, New York, United States.

For thousands of years, the area was inhabited by various cultures of indigenous peoples.

At the time of European encounter, this was the territory of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, based in present-day New York state.

Permanent European-American settlement did not take place until after the American Revolution, about 1801, after most of the Iroquois had been forced to cede their lands to New York and had emigrated across the Niagara River to Upper Canada.

The United States' war with Great Britain first included an embargo of trade with Canada, disrupting the local economy.