Person:Robert Potter (7)

BIOGRAPHY: A Genealogy of the Potter Family originating in Rhode Island By Rev. Jeremiah Potter Phenix, R. I.: John H. Campbell, Book and Job Printer 1881 - Page 5

Robert Potter was the first of the family that came over from the mother country. This was in 1630. He settled in Lynn, Mass., was admitted a freeman on the third of September 1631, but soon removed to Rhode Island. He was an inhabitant of Portsmouth for a time but was admitted an inhabitant of Newport, July, 1638, and in 1641 united with Gorton in the settlement of Shawomut, now Warwick. In 1643 he was arrested, taken to Boston, tried for contumacy and convicted, but appealed to the British Council and the sentence was reversed and he was released and returned home in 1644. (When the Massachusetts soldiers came to arrest the settlers soon after the occupancy of the land, his wife, the mother of his children, sought refuge in the woods and soon after died from exposure and fright.---See page 48, Fuller's History of Warwick.) He was a member of the Rhode Island General Council from Warwick, in 1648, '51, '52, '55. It is thought that he was of Coventry, England, where Humphrey Potter was Major in 1690. He kept an inn in Warwick in 1649, (the General Assembly met in the house of Robert Potter in this town, Dec. 20th, 1652.-See Fuller's History, page 47.) He was one of the original twelve purchasers of the town of Warwick from the Indian Miantonomi from which it appears that he had his share set off to him on Warwick Neck and other places. It is supposed he lived the rest of his days in this town. He died there in the latter part of the year 1661 after undergoing privations and hardships, and he is said to be buried in what is now called Old Warwick, in a lot just a little northerly from where the road turns off to go to Warwick Neck. The name of his first wife, the mother of his children, is not known. She died in 1643, during the time of his imprisonment. He married a second time, a women named Sarah, who survived him and married John Sanford, the Boston school-master.

There is a difference in the date of the death of Robert Potter in Staples's Simplisities Defence, page 88. He says the town of Warwick met in Council on November 5th, 1661, to agitate about his estate, he having died intestate, the proceeded in it and settled the estate. Robert Potter died in the latter part of year 1661, and his wife died in the latter part of the year 1643.

History of Warwick, Rhode Island, by Oliver Payson Fuller, B.A., Providence - Angell, Burlingame & Co., Printers 1875 - Page 48
When the Massachusetts soldiers came to arrest the settlers soon after their occupancy of the land, Mrs. Potter, with some of the other women, sought refuge in the woods, and soon after wards died from exposure and fright.

Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Vol. III - Providence; Marshall, Brown and Company MDCCCXXXV
Warwick Purchase, Jan. 12, 1642
The sale of Warwick, was made by Meantinomy, chief Sachem of Narragansett, to Randal Holden, John Green, John Wickes, Francis Weston, Samuel Gorton, Richard Waterman, John Warner, Richard Carder, Samson Shotton, Robert Potter, and William Wuddal. It is said in the deed to be made with the consent of the present inhabitants, and the marks of Meantinomy, an of Pomham, Sachem of Showomet, are fixed to it.

Sources of information for this family include John O. Austin's Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island and the Potter Family Genealogies, Part 2: George Potter of Portsmouth, R.I., and His Descendants.
From these sources, it was obvious that there were numerous immigrants to colonial Rhode Island named Potter and that there were probably close ties of kinship between some of these individuals. This theory appeared to be confirmed by some correspondence with Vernon and Nola (Steed) Valantine of La Crescenta, California. Their research and analysis, which appears in the Ancestral File of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, seemed to solve the puzzle of the Potter immigrants of Rhode Island, linking them as children of George and Martha (-----) Potter of London.

However, in 1999, another researcher, Paul Gifford, informed me that he had reviewed the parish registers and discovered that most of the birth records thought to pertain to the immigrant siblings had corresponding death records! The English origins of George-1 Potter and his kinship, if any, to the other Potter immigrants of Rhode Island remain unknown.

1.   Clarke, Louise B. The Greenes of Rhode Island with Historical Records of English Ancestry 1534-1902
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2. ↑ Parish Register shows Robert Potter son of George was buried St. James Clerkenwell Aug 1609.
   Image online at ancestry.com [1]