Mail Call: 31 August 1935 (George)

From George Potter in Cabool to his daughter Mary in Washington DC.

One of my favorite old letters, this tells the tale of Gladys Potter tangling with the Cabool School Superintendent over a tuition bill which may keep Marjorie in the Sargent school while David and Florence get to ride the bus to school in Cabool.  The tale is interrupted by other matters but then continues on Page 4 with Gladys coming home in a rage over her disrespectful reception by the Super.  A map showing the Sargent school is at the bottom of this page.

Note: "Draughans" is the business college which Mary had attended in Tulsa.
"Miss Elam" is evidently in charge of bill collection, as Mary's student debt is much in arrears.
"Art" is Mary's boyfriend, whose hometown was Huntington, NY
"Vera" otherwise unidentified.

Sargent School Location..driving Marjorie one way while Dave and Florence take the schoolbus to Cabool
Potter farm was approx. at the end of the yellow line in the NW corner of  map, N of the road. and W or the train tracks.
Credit: www.topoquest.com; fair use claimed of detail of much larger topo map.

1 June 1875: Truman Potter's Farm, Eden, NY

Mary Jane Valentine Potter, wife of Truman Potter
Photo from jacki Neitzke's collection

In 1875, while grandfather George Potter was being a baby down on his father David "Max" Potter's farm near French Creek, NY, David's father, mother and brothers were living about 70 miles north in Eden, Erie County, NY.

The New York agricultural census of 1875 took place on 1 June in both French Creek and Erie.  The tabulation of David Potter's farm was shown in the 10 April blog post commemorating George's 60th birthday.


Here, for comparison if nothing else, are the data for George's grandfather Truman Potter's farm in Eden NY.

The location of the farm is known from this 1866 atlas of Eden County.  Truman Potter's house is underlined in orange (at the intersection of today's Eden-Evans Center Road and Hemlock Road). The Valentine property underlined in blue is by 1875 in the charge of Truman's brother-in-law George C. Valentine, the elderly George Claghorn Valentine (the one-time whaler) having moved in with a daughter Harriet Valentine Hale and her family a bit west in Evans, NY.

credit: HistoricMapWorks.com, fair use claimed on this tiny excerpt of the map for genealogical purposes.
The cemetery at the right edge of the photo is where this generation ended up, for the most part.

In 1875, Truman Potter (53) still has sons George (23), Millard (17), Franklin (19), and Clinton (9) at home, so he has much more in the way of helpers than David "Max" (25) and Mary (19) with their babies and one hired man on his farm.

Truman Potter's farm was about three times as large as David's at 75 acres, of which 60 were "improved" and 10 in "wood and timber" with 5 "unimproved".  The value of the farm was $3750, with buildings $400 and stock $469 with $100 in tools and implements.  He had had gross sales of $300 in 1874 (about $6500 in current dollars, to the extent such comparisons are meaningful, and a total value for the farm and contents approaching $80,000 in current dollars).

The Truman Potter family had powed 10 acres in 1874 and 12 in 1875, from which they had harvestd 46 bushels of winter wheat, 104 bushels of oats, 140 bushels of potatoes.  There were 60 apple trees, yielding 110 bushels of fruit, some of which turned into 4 barrels of cider (presumably the hard kind).

There were six milk cows in 1874 and seven in 1875 with 2 heifer calves in 1874 but none in 1875.  Milk was sent to the factory in unspecified units of 6 in 1874 and 7 in 1875. They produced 150 pounds of butter, in which they were much outdone by David's farm with 200 pounds from only two cows.

The cows were supported on 22 acres of pasture (30 in 1874) and 16 acres of meadow (14 in 1874) with 25 tons of hay gotten in during 1874.

The State of New York did not ask about chickens, pigs or other small animals, or about the production from home gardening, or about the horses which were surely needed to work the land.

Google Maps view of the site of Truman Potter's farm, looking in from the intersection of the two fronting roads.
Hemlock Road is the one running into the center distance.  There is an old house beyond the trees, but no nearly old enough to have housed these ancestors.

Confused yet?...George Henry Potter's immediate ancestors.  Ancestry.com tree.

Truman Potter, his children and their spouses:

-Truman POTTER (31)             b. 21 May 1822                   d.  7 Sep 1881

 s-Mary Jane VALENTINE (30)     b.  1 Jul 1831   m.  2 Jan 1848  d. 26 Aug 1904

  |-Maria M POTTER (48)         b.  8 Dec 1848                   d.        1925

  | s-Albert J. READ (355)      b.    Dec 1847   m.        1875  d.        1920

  |-David Henry POTTER (21)     b. 30 Mar 1850                   d.  2 Apr 1912

  | s-Mary M  HASBROUCK (20)    b.  9 May 1855   m. 25 Dec 1871  d. 28 Apr 1912

  |-George H POTTER (49)        b.    Feb 1852                   d.        1928

  | s-Emily M KESTER (357)      b.    May 1858   m.        1878  d.        1935

  |-Emma Jane POTTER (47)       b. 22 Feb 1854                   d. 22 Sep 1887

  | s-Burwell E HAWKINS (366)   b. 11 Jul 1849   m.        1889  d.  7 Nov 1934

  |-Franklin POTTER (51)        b.    Feb 1856                   d.        1916

  | s-Ellen PHILLIPPI (360)     b.    Jul 1858   m.        1878  d.        1942

  |-Millard POTTER (50)         b.        1858                   d.        1882

  |-Clinton POTTER (52)         b.  5 Oct 1865                   d. 27 Jun 1922

  | s-Eliza PHILLIPPI (365)     b.    Mar 1863   m.        1882  d.  8 Mar 1921

4 May 1900: Eden NY School #8 Graduation

On this day in 1900, a ceremony took place at Eden (NY) School #8.  

Eden School End-of-year program
From the collection of Jackie Neitski with many thanks.

Great-grandfather David Potter is the "Collector" for the school district, while his younger brother Clinton Potter (1865-1922) is "Trustee".  Two of David Potter's daughters, Bessie (age 14) and Dora (age 7) were enrolled in the school as documented on the right hand page.  With one teacher and 32 children this was clearly a one-room schoolhouse.

David Potter and family had moved to Eden from Corry, PA sometime after 1892 (Dora was born in Corry) and will be back in Corry, PA before 1905 (they are absent from the 1905 New York State Census; David Potter's mother Mary Jane Valentine Potter had died in 1904).

Both Clinton Potter and another brother, Franklin Potter, were married to Phillippi sisters and the children on the list with those names were their nieces or nephews, while Vellam and Yager also are found on the family tree. Mr. Arthur Black, Teacher, can be located in the census records; he was around 21 years old in 1900.

Clinton Potter and unknown boy; Clinton and Eliza Potter had one daughter.
Back: "Here is a couple of bums and a pony for the children"

Clinton Potter on right is labelled,  the others are unidentified.
Might be brothers George and Franklin (older than Clinton by 13 and 9 years, respectively)
Back:  "George, these are the three outlaws of N.Y. State, I guess you know all of them? Can you bet it?

The Potter family is almost all living in Eden, Erie County, NY  in 1900, as documented in the Federal Census of June 16, 1900.  This looks to me like an "eldercare" situation, or at least operating the elder's farm(s), but there is no way to know for certain.

In one household near Eden:

George Potter (age 25), lives with his parents David "Max" Potter (50), and Mary Minerva Potter (45) and his younger sisters Bessie (14) and Dora (7). David Potter's occupation is "farmer", and George is "farm labor."

In another household a few doors away:

George's older sister May Potter Brown (27) with her husband Earl Brown (30) and three children (9, 4, and 3).  The Browns had been living near Chicago between 1890 and 1896 and will move back to Chicago by 1910.  The Brown household includes George's younger sister, Alice Potter (17).  I suppose Alice is helping with childcare.  Alice will get married in Chicago in 1903.  Earl Brown is working as a "telephone inst(aller)"

In another household nearby:

George's grandmother, Mary Jane Valentine Potter (widow, age 68) who will live until 1904.

George's brother Charles William Potter (19) is working in Pomfret, NY as a "factory hand" and living in a boarding house with a Phillippi cousin. He will move to Chicago and marry  by 1906.

George's sister Emma Potter Parker (22), her husband Silas (27) and daughter Lucille (2) live back in Corry PA at 103 Essex Street. Silas works as a machinist.

Meanwhile, in Eden, NY, Clinton Potter told the 1900 Census canvasser that his line of work was "capitalist"

16 July 1919: Tulsa, Oklahoma; A letter from George Potter

I found the following 1919 letter from George Potter to his daughter Mary back in Erie, Pennsylvania in a box of miscellaneous holiday and gift cards, mostly from persons unknown to me, rather than in the carefully-sorted files where Mary kept her (many) old letters.

This letter is special, if a bit odd, since it is addressed to Mary (age 8 at the time) but gives instructions on what to pack and move from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, and how to pack things.  It provides an interesting mental inventory of a household of the time, although in a form Gladys Potter probably neither needed nor wanted.  George has been in Tulsa for a while (he has an "ingrown appetite" from living in boarding houses), but his family would not arrive until January, 1920.

There seems to have been a rather good piano to sell (perhaps Mary Minerva Hasbrouck Potter had played once...although Victorian parlor furnishings may well have included a piano without anyone able to play it).  There was also a chair with Mary Hasbrouck's grandfather's name (Robert Heath) mentioned specifically...I wonder what happened to it.

Please click the letters to enlarge them if necessary.

Letter, July 16, 1919
The inflation factor 1919-2016 is about 20x

note:  the Benders mentioned here are Gladys'
aunt "Vine" Lore Bender (1865-1945)
and husband Eli Bender.  

1933: Sargent, Missouri farm

The new Potter farm in Sargent, Missouri is shown in the following 1930 plat map section 16, listed by its previous owner J. Godfrey - 60 acres.  At least, that property is consistent with the legal description from Gladys' sale of the property in 1952.  By the time the Potters got there, Mr. Arch Brooks had ownership of the C.C. Riverie Estate, and was nearest-neighbor on all sides.  This fits the 1940 Census records.  The property is actually just within the borders of Burdine Township and is so treated in the census, but it is much closer to the small villiage of Sargent.

Detail of Sargent, Missouri plat map ca 1930
credit: oclc.org

These photographs are all just labelled "Missouri" and so could be from anytime between 1933 and 1943.

Gladys Potter and Car.

George Potter in cornfield,
Sargent, MO

There was a creek nearby for swimming and fishing:

David Potter and ?
Sargent, MO

I recognize Dorothy Potter (left, hair)
Gladys Potter (Center, Hat)
Elaine Potter (Right, Hat)*
Not sure of the others.

The view in Sargent, MO

I think this is a Cabool parade
with a good theme.

This is likely a partisan
rather than agricultural donkey.