John H. Potter's Life Spans Period of Many Changes

Mr. John H. Potter, 217 Elm St., who is observing his 88th birthday today at the home of a stepson, Joe Stillwell, in Marshall, has lived his entire life near or in Boonville. For 33 years, he sold fuel oils here, driving his wagon daily up and down the streets of the town. During the 33 years he was never absent from his route more than a day or two at a time except for a period of three weeks when a son was very ill.
The coal oil wagon was typical of its day. The body of the wagon was a cylindrical tank with faucets to facilitate the filling of the housewife's can. It had a clanging bell to announce its arrival in the neighborhood, and Mr. Potter sat up front on a raised seat with a huge brown umbrella shielding him from summer rains and suns and winter storms, his foot rising and falling on the lever that set the bell into rhythmic sounds. The streets were dirt and sometimes in bad weather even the horse-drawn vehicle became mired down in mud holes over town.
Coal oil sold for 15 cents a gallon, then later for 20 cents or five gallons for 90 cents. Mr. Potter remembers one time when, for a period of three days, he sold it for five cents a gallon. He was indulging in a price war with a competitor. The competitor went out of business about six months later.
Mr. Potter, one of ten children, was born near Hail Ridge schoolhouse east of town. His father, Joe Potter, was an Englishman by birth, as was his grandfather. (My comment - Joseph was born in Cooper County, Missouri and William Potter (John Henry Potter's grandfather), was born in Kentucky). Mr. Potter remembers hauling cordwood in from the country in his youth with an ox team. They were named Tom and Jerry. Sometimes, after a hot day in town, the oxen would smell water on their way home and make a break for the creek. It was impossible to turn them.
Mr. Potter's grandfather, Joe Potter (my comment - actually William Potter), ran the first ferry across the Missouri River here, Mr. Potter relates. The ferry was a horsepower ferry, that is, a team of horses on a specially built ramp kept the wheel churning through the water by the treading of their feet. The ferry tied up at the old landing called Potter's landing.
When Potter was about 20 years old, he moved to Boonville to live with a sister (my comment - from the 1880 census, this was his sister, Emma Potter, who married James Dunnavant. John Henry Potter's father, Joseph Potter, was also living in the same household. This must have been shortly after Mary Jane Kenrick Potter, John Henry Potter's mother, died.), and the hazards and opportunities of the Missouri River drew him like a magnet. He became a fisherman, and for 15 years fished the waters of the Big Muddy and sold his catch in wheelbarrows on the streets. Most of the fishing was done with nets, and one night he and Jim Donavant (my comment - his brother-in-law James Dunnavant) brought in a record haul of 1100 pounds of catfish. One fish weighed 200 pounds. The men sold all of the catch on the street from their barrows.
Men who follow nature's trails for many years accumulate rich experiences. Mr. Potter, who trailed his nets in the river and poled walnut logs down its current from Lexington, collected his share of unusual adventures. He recalls the time when he was dressing a catfish for True Bowman, who was looking on, and he curt into the fish's stomach to reveal a three-foot blacksnake. He lost a sale right there.
Another time, inured as he was to the unexpected, he was considerably startled cutting into a fish to find inside it a woman's finger wearing a gold ring. He believes the finger was from the body of a woman who had been drowned and that the fish, attracted by the bright ring, had nibbled off her finger.
A furniture manufacturing company located on Water Street in those days used to send men up to Lexington, Mo. in wagons so that they might pole rafts of walnut logs down the river to the factory. It was only done when the river was high in the spring or summer and the trip was fraught with plenty of danger.
One time in particular a group of ten men, of which John Potter was a member, were poling the logs down the current when they came to a great lot of drift that had surged out from a stream. The 300 logs went under the drift and sank, but not one of the men lost his life.
In the winter time when fishing was difficult, Mr. Potter helped Jack Long with the cutting of river ice for commercial sale the next summer. The ice cutting season usually lasted about four weeks, and sometimes as many as 75 men were employed in the work.
One time when large chunks of ice had been hauled upon the bank by mules and Mr. Potter was helping chop the ice into smaller blocks with an axe, he made a slanting lick and severed the middle toe of his brother-in-law, Tony Back, who was standing near him. He still wonders how he managed to cut off only one toe.
For many years, Mr. Potter and his wife, the former Miss Louise Back, lived on First Street between Morgan and Water Streets. The night that his son "Curley" was born was a very dark and rainy night. Mr. Potter himself was sick and he decided to ask a neighbor to go for a doctor for Mrs. Potter. On the way to the neighbor's in the pitch dark and driving rain, he lost his bearings and walked off the culvert over the stream near his home. He went plunging down into the water and, though it was not deep, he was so confused by the dark, the rain, his fall, and his weakness, he was unable to find his way out of the stream until morning.
In his struggles in the water he lost his hat bearing a band with 12 rattlesnake rattles on it. The next morning, a Negro in East Boonville found the hat floating down the river, recognized it, and at once set up the alarm over town that John Potter had drowned.
Bringing sand down from the sandbars up the river was another of the jobs that attracted Mr. Potter in his early manhood. He sank a flat boat with too much sand one time. The sand was wheeled from the bar and loaded onto the boat. For a day of this pastime, he received a dollar and a half!
After he quit the river and went into the business of peddling coal oil, his life was less eventful. But there were incidents that enlivened the days. Like the time he telephoned his home to find out if any orders had been left there. His wife informed him rather excitedly that the cow, named Smitty in honor of the man from whom they had bought her, had just given birth to twins. About an hour later, he called back home to check on orders again, and learned to his amazement that Smitty now had triplets. He said that two or three hundred people came to see the cow and her calves, some of them from a distance. And if any one doubts the fact of Smitty's triplets, Mr. Potter has a picture of the bovine family to prove it.
About seven years ago Mrs. Potter died. Several years before that the Potters had celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on the same day that Mrs. Potter's sister, Mrs. Dom Barnert, and Mr. Barnert celebrated theirs. All of the Potter children who were living were present. There had been ten of them counting the two stepchildren. Two are now dead, James William and John. Two sons live in Boonville, Herman and W. A. (Curley). One son, George, lives in Paradise, Ariz., and one son, Ed, in St. Louis. Two daughters, Louise McCartney and Mrs. Bessie Bennett, live in Springfield. The stepchildren are Joe Stillwell, Marshall, and Mrs. Jess Burt, Pratt, Kan.
Mr. Potter is not so frail as he appears. He is still working, he says. He tends a two-acre garden every year, and keeps it in thriving condition. His son, Herman, and his family with whom he lives have all the vegetables they want, and Mr. Potter often sells a surplus. His health is good, his mind clear, his sense of humor as lively as in the heyday of his youth. He can sit in his easy chair and reflect upon a rich and fruitful life. He is surrounded by his children and cherished by their affection. He has lived the allotted three score years and ten, and 18 years more. What more can a man ask?

From the Boonville Daily News, 16 April 1946. Provided by William Scroggin.

November 12, 2005. Internet doesn’t show any entry for “Hail Ridge” in Missouri. Burrton Woodruff III.

Boonville Daily News, 3 May 1949

John H. Potter, Native of County, Dies at Age of 91

John H. Potter, 91, one of Cooper County's oldest native-born citizens, died at the home of a son, W. A. Potter. 407 Walnut St., at 12:15 p. m. Saturday. He had been in failing health for some time and seriously ill for several days. Funeral services will be conducted at the Evangelical Church at 2:30 p. m. tomorrow. The Rev. E. P. Abele, pastor of the church, will conduct the rites. Burial will be in Walnut Grove Cemetery. The body will remain at the Stegner Funeral Home until time for the rites. Mr. Potter is survived by three daughters, Mrs. Jesse Burt, Pratt, Kans., and Mrs. Louise McCartney and Mrs. Bessie Bennett, Springfield; by five sons, Joseph W. Stillwell, Marshall, Herman E. Potter and W. A. Potter, Boonville, George Potter, Paradise, Ariz., and Edward Potter, St. Louis; by 20 grand children, 31 great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren. A retired oil dealer, he was born in the Hail Ridge community April 16, 1858, the son of Joseph and Nancy Potter. His grandfather operated the first ferry across the Missouri River here. During his early life Mr. Potter engaged in work on the Missouri River and later became an oil dealer. His "coal oil wagon" was long a familiar on Boonville streets. Mr. Potter was married to Louise Barbara Back Sept. 6, 1882. She died several years ago. He was also preceded in death by two sons. He was a charter member of the local organizations of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, Woodman of the World and the Woodman Circle.53