Elisha Reynolds Potter Papers (Mss. Gr. 12)

Biographical note

Elisha Reynolds Potter was born on June 20, 1811 in the home of his parents, Elisha Reynolds Potter, Sr. (1764-1835) and Mary (Mawney) Potter in Little Rest (now Kingston, a village of South Kingstown), Rhode Island. His father "had been in turn blacksmith, farmer, and practising lawyer, served for some thirty years in the Rhode Island legislature, was four times elected to the federal Congress, and in 1818 was unsuccessful candidate for the governor of this state."

Elisha Reynolds Potter, Jr. began his education at the Kingston Academy (formerly known as the Pettaquamscut Academy) which his father and eight other men had incorporated in 1823. He entered Harvard in 1826 and after his graduation in 1830, he returned to Kingston to teach Classics at the Kingston Academy of which he later became a president and a trustee. After less than a year of teaching at the Academy, he left to study law in the office of Nathaniel Searle of Providence. On October 9, 1832 he was admitted to the bar and began his law career. In the same year he joined the Rhode Island Historical Society, of which he was vice-president from 1850 to 1855.

In 1834 the Committee on Religious Corporations of the Rhode Island General Assembly employed him to write a report on the powers granted by the General Assembly to religious corporations. This was the first of a number of published works by Potter. In 1835 his second work, "Early History of Narragansett" was published by the Rhode Island Historical Society in the third volume of its Collections. In 1835, he became adjutant-general of Rhode Island, an office he held until 1837. In that latter year he published "A Brief Account of Emissions of Paper Money, Made by the Colony of Rhode Island." It was later reprinted in 1863 in Historical Sketches of the Paper Currency of the American Colonies by Henry Phillips, Jr. It was published later still in the series "Rhode Island Historical Tracts" after having been rewritten. In 1839, after election to the Rhode Island House of Representatives, he wrote a report about the Narragansett Indians; "(Jan. Acts & Resolves, RI General Assembly, p.28), covering their land title sand the encroachment of their white neighbors upon their lands. Severe punishments were suggested by Mr. Potter, but never put into execution."

He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention during the years 1841-1842. "When in the latter year the uprising known as the Dorr War was precipitated, he took his stand with those who were opposed to violent action and military force and was one of the three commissioners sent to consult with president Tyler." At he end of this turmoil, in 1842, Potter wrote a pamphlet entitled Considerations on the Questions of the Adoption of a Constitution and Extension of Suffrage in Rhode Island, which was reprinted in 1879. "In 1842 he was elected as Whig to the twenty-eighth Congress, and served Mach 4, 1843 to March 3, 1845." While he was a member of the U.S. Congress, Potter addressed the House in opposition to a motion "asking the House to inquire to the conduct of the President in relation to the late troubles in Rhode Island."

After his term in the House Potter turned his attention to the matter of public education. "He prepared for popular use remarks on the provisions of the school laws and on the duties of the different officers and bodies under them. These he followed by a set of forms, or precedents for proceedings in the administration of the system, and still further by a specimen of rules and regulations for adoption by the school committees of the several towns."

"Mr. Potter continued these labors in the cause of popular education by the careful selection of books for village libraries, leading the way by establishing, at his own personal cost, such an institution in his native town that was free to the public. He printed catalogues for gratuitous distribution among the people, teaching them how to select good books, and these he followed by little tracts which he called 'Hints on Reading'." He delivered before a lyceum in South Kingstown an essay, "A Brief History of the English Language, and of the Principle Changes it has Undergone," which was later printed in the Massachusetts Common School Journal. Potter became Commissioner of Public Schools in 1849 and continued in this office until October 1854. Between January 1852 and August 1853, Potter was the Editor and chief contributor to the Rhode Island Educational Magazine. In February 1851, Potter delivered an address to the Rhode Island Historical Society, which was later published, on the history of education in Rhode Island, and in May 1854, he delivered an address on the occasion of the opening of the Rhode Island Normal School in Providence.

As a result of his interest in the history of Narragansett, Potter surveyed the boundaries of many of the farms there and did research on the history of their land titles. "The work done by Mr. Potter upon the map of Rhode Island made by H. F. Walling in 1854 and republished in 1855 is one of the most valuable historical works ever done by him. On these maps are indicted the localities of all known purchases of land from the Indians and the Indian names are affixed to all localities which Mr. Potter could discover."

Between 1861 and 1863 Potter was the State Senator from South Kingstown. In August 1862, he reported to the legislature on the "Right of a Legislature to Grant Perpetual Exemption from Taxation." This was in regard to a controversy over that portion of the Brown University Charter which exempted from taxation property belonging to the professors and the President of the University. The Legislature passed an act limiting this exemption to ten thousand dollars.

In 1867, Potter wrote a deposition in the copyright case, Lawrence vs. Dana. In the following year he became an Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, an office he held until his death. The last work he published was a "Memoir concerning the French Settlements and French Settlers in the Colony of Rhode Island," in 1879. Potter died in Kingston on April 10, 1882.

Sidney S. Rider delivered a memorial address to the Rhode Island Historical Society on July 11, 1882, entitled "Historical Research and Educational Labor Illustrated in the Work of Elisha Reynolds Potter, Late Judge of the supreme Court of Rhode Island." This was subsequently published in Pawtucket by the Press of the Chronicle Printing Company, in 1905. This address and the Dictionary of American Biography, Volume XV, were the sources of information for this biographical note.