Person:Thomas Potts (48)

Thomas was born in a rural agricultural area, though some relatives were grocers and perhaps he learnt his trade with them. He moved north to Scotland where he married and set up a grocers shop in Edinburgh.

He seems to have been quite successful, a newspaper article shows him advising customers that he is moving to larger premises in Bristo Port and advertise a new delivery of hams and cucumbers, obviously he was a grocer to the higher classes. He also bought a tenement in Bristo Port which he demolished and built in their place 3 houses, with windows opening through the city walls, these were also not for the poor, a dowager duchess rented one for some years.

He had no children and left his entire estate to his wife. She later set up a trust fund that would go to the two sisters of Thomas when she herself died. The sisters died before Isabella so the trust was used in its alternative form to pay the income to the children and their descendants, in perpetuity, this included the children of Thomas' brother John who had died before Thomas.

1. ↑ Find A Grave.

   Birth: Nov. 6, 1737, England
   Death: Nov. 24, 1800, Scotland
   
   Son of George Potts and Jane Rutherford. Husband of Isabella Atkinson married 1771 in Oldhamstocks, Scotland
   
   Burial:
   Greyfriars Kirkyard
   Edinburgh
   City of Edinburgh, Scotland

2. ↑ Nall, William; Wood, Mrs. Herbert Maxwell. Registers of Alnham, Northumberland: Baptisms, 1688-1812. Marriages, 1705-1812. Burials, 1727-1812
   4.
3. ↑ ^3.0 3.1 Lyndsay, Jameson and Haldane. Potts trust. (Collection of legal documents and letters)
   Petition to Court for appointment of new factory, 1900.