From the book History of Walworth County Wisconsin, by Albert Clayton Beckwith, 
publ. 1912 - Pages 548 - 549
 
JOHN FOX POTTER (John6, Rev. Isiah5, Daniel4, 3, Nathaniel2, William1), son of 
John POTTER and Caroline FOX, was born at Augusta, Maine, May 11, 1817.  He was 
educated at Phillips-Exeter Academy, and had as schoolmates and friends the 
five WASHBURNE brothers, who were afterwards of as many states; namely, Maine, 
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California, and all more or less 
politically fortunate.  He became, like his father, a lawyer, and coming to 
East Troy in 1838 he became also a farmer, having settled on three hundred and 
fifty acres of land in sections 10, 11, 15.  His land nearly enclosed a 
lakelet, and on its high bank he built his house.  He married October 15, 1839, 
Frances E. L., daughter of Capt. George FOX and Rebecca LEWIS, and they had six 
children.  Their son, Alfred Charles POTTER, was a sergeant of Company I, 
Twenty-eighth Infantry.  The places Judge POTTER filled and those he declined 
have been mentioned.  As a member of Assembly he exposed a railway company's 
method of influencing a governor, a judge of the supreme court, a legislature, 
and part of the daily press to secure to itself a large grant of public land in 
aid of railway building.  He voted for its bill, but refused its present bonds, 
though that was the share of a senator.  In two of his congressional terms the 
unending debate on the admission of Kansas, with all its wanderings,overshadowed 
other proceedings, and in his third term the consideration of war measures was 
always in hand.  In the first four years he found occasions to use his fists 
with much practical and some scenic effect in Homeric battles on the floor of 
the House, in which he left the marks of his peculiar grace on the godlike 
countenances of William BARKSDALE, Reuben DAVIS and Lucius Q. C. LAMAR - all of 
Mississippi.  "Potter, the wiry, from woody Wisconsin," lives sub-immortally in 
Punch's hexametric story of these congressional diversions.  Mr. POTTER never 
quite liked that so much importance should be given to his affair with Mr. 
PRYOR, which grew from a correction and counter-correction of a passage in the 
record of a previous day's debate.  The matter was wholly personal, but the 
excited state of partisan discussion prepared men's minds to take fire over-
easily.  Northern opinion justified Mr. POTTER's acceptance of the foolish 
challenge.  He always spoke appreciately of General PRYOR's personal and 
professional qualities, and similarly of General BARKSDALE and Colonel DAVIS - 
but not so of Judge LAMAR.  Near the end of his last session, in 1863, Mrs. 
POTTER died of typhoid fever contracted while trying to better the conditions 
of a badly managed military hospital.  She was a high-minded, intelligent and 
brave-spirited woman.  December 7, 1865, he married her sister, Sarah Lewis 
FOX, who died in 1882.  In 1873 the Greeleyan bolters of the year before, with 
the Democrats of the county, needlessly mistaking his position, named him as 
their candidate for state senator.  He was not fully aware of this action until 
election day, when he disclaimed such political fellowship.  Taking an open 
Republican ballot, he folded it before all men present and thus voted for Mr. 
WEEKS, his quasi-opponent.  He died May 18, 1899.  He was a ready, easy 
speaker, without tricks of elocution, and cared more to convince his hearers 
than to electrify them or to stir them to transient emotion.

Submitted By:  Carol
(carolann612@charter.net)