Alina M. B. Porter (b. Birdsey) (1855-1946) was born in Meriden, Connecticut, and died in Baltimore, Maryland. By 1880 she was working as a clerk in a dry goods store. In the early 1880s she married William D. Porter, a traveling salesman for E. C. Atkins & Co., which made woodworking machinery. They lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. Porter's husband died in 1887 and by 1900 she had moved into the household of her sister Flora E. B. Bunnell (b. Birdsey) in Baltimore. In the late 1880s, Porter studied Christian Science with Mary Baker Eddy's student Silas J. Sawyer, who had traveled from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Indianapolis to teach, and she sat in on classes taught by John P. Filbert, also Eddy's student. Porter joined The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 1, 1898, and was a member of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Baltimore, Maryland. She served as the librarian of the Baltimore Christian Science Reading Room from 1900 to 1910 and was a practitioner listed in The Christian Science Journal from 1900 to 1940.

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