John Martin Poyer – Commander, United States Navy

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Commander Poyer served as the Governor of American Samoa from 1 March 1915 to 10 June 1919.

Without orders from the government but based on what he learned from a radio news service, the governor of American Samoa, Navy Commander John M. Poyer, instituted a quarantine policy.

When he heard of the outbreak on Western Samoa, he banned travel to or from the neighboring islands, which were about 40 miles apart. When the governor of Western Samoa, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Logan, sent a boat with mail to American Samoa to be put on the itinerant mail boat docked there, Poyer refused even to allow the bags to be transferred. Enraged, Logan temporarily stopped all radio communication with the American islands.

Poyer persuaded the island’s natives to mount a shore patrol to prevent illegal landings. People who disembarked from ships sailing from the American mainland were kept under house arrest for a specified period, or examined daily. Aspects of the quarantine continued into mid-1920, a year after Poyer departed to the sound of a 17-gun salute.

There were no influenza deaths on American Samoa.

POYER, JOHN M.
Commander, U.S. Navy
Governor, American Samoa
Date of Action: 1918 – 1919

Citation:

The Navy Cross is presented to John M. Poyer, Commander, U.S. Navy, for exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility as governor of American Samoa, for wise and successful administration of his office and especially for the extraordinarily successful measures by which American Samoa was kept absolutely immune from the epidemic of influenza at a time when in the neighboring islands of the Samoan group more than 10,000 deaths occurred, and when the percentage of deaths throughout the Polynesian Islands as a group, is reported to have ranged from 30 to 40 per cent of the population.

COMMANDER JOHN M. POYER DIES
Ex-Governor of American Samoa
Won the Navy Cross

WASHINGTON, May 13, 1922 – Commander John Martin Poyer, U.S.N., retired, died suddenly at his apartment in the St. Nicholas last night. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Emma Porter Poyer, a niece of General Horace Porter, former Ambassador to France, and a daughter, Miss Mary Porter Poyer.

Commander Poyer was retired from active service in June 1906, on account of ill health, but was recalled to duty in March1915, and appointed Governor of American Samoa.  He served until June 1919. His work in preventing the influenza epidemic from spreading from British Samoa to American Samoa was so notable that he received the Navy Cross. Since his relief as Governor of Samoa he had lived in this city.

MRS. JOHN MARTIN POYER
Widow of Former Governor of American Samoa Dies

WASHINGTON, January 12, 1932 – Mrs. John Martin Poyer, widow of Commander Poyer, U.S.N., former Governor of American Samoa, died yesterday at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Leslie A. Kniskern, 6410 Georgia Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland, after a short illness. Funeral services will be held at the residence tomorrow afternoon at 1 o’clock followed by burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Mrs. Poyer was the daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. George W. Porter of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and was a resident of that city until her marriage in 1891. She was a granddaughter of Governor David Rittenhouse Porter of Pennsylvania and great-granddaughter of Major General Andrew Porter, a member of General Washington’s staff.  The late General Horace Porter, former Ambassador of France, was her uncle.

She was well known in Washington service circles.  Commander Poyer was attached here at different times and was on active duty at the Navy Department until he became Governor of American Samoa in 1915.

POYER, JOHN MARTIN
COMDR USN
DATE OF DEATH: 05/12/1922
BURIED AT: SECTION ES  SITE 1182
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

POYER, EMMA W/O JOHN MARTIN
DATE OF DEATH: 05/12/1922
BURIED AT: SECTION EAST  SITE 1182
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

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