Frank Hunter Potter, 1909, Cast medallion (single), bronze, 42 cm
Mariette Benedict Mills, sculptor (American), was born in Paris: daughter of Launt Thompson, the sculptor and Maria Louisa Thompson.
Frank Hunter Potter
( 1851 - 1932 )
Frank Hunter Potter was the son of Rev. Potter's second wife, Sarah Benedict Potter (who was cousin to the Rev's first wife Sarah Marie Nott Potter). He was born December 28, 1851 in Schenetady, New York.
Frank was educated at the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia, to which many of his brothers went, at St. Paul's School in Concord and at Union College. He won the First Oratorical Medal at Union (an old family retainer describe it as the Blatchford Ornamental Medal), on graduation.
When he left college he went to his brother Clarkson's office, where he studied law for two and a half years. During most of this time, however, he held a position as the assistant to the musical editor of the New York Tribune, Mr. John R. G. Hassard, far and away the best musical critic of his day. This was partly to add to his income, but mainly, because music was the real interest of his life.
After his brother William became Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Frank joined him in Washington as his confidential secretary, and remained with him til he gave up the position. Then he came back to New York and was admitted to the bar, only to give up law altogether and devote himself exclusively to journalism, becoming in addition to his musical work as an assistant to William Winter, the famous dramatic critic. Under him and Mr. Hassard he had at least a thorough training in this work, and then he went on to the New York Herald, taking a similar position.
While working for the Herald his health broke down and he went to live in Florida, where he became associated with a friend who owned the first ice factory in that state. It was a very primitive, almost frontier life, and his duties ranged from keeping the books and supervising the company store.
The climate was to much and he went North again. He went to St. Paul School, where he was a master for a year and a half. He lived in Providence and Morristown for several years, doing literary work, until he went to Italy to sing in the Italian opera. After gaining enough experience at this to enable him to teach singing he went back to New York, where he joined the staff of the Metropolitan College of Music. Shortly after this his old master, Errani, the greatest singing teacher with whom he ever came in contact (and he studied with most of the famous ones), died, and he succeeded to his business.
During the time he taught in New York he had the good fortune to be permitted to organize the music and the choir school at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He had had charge of the music at the pro-Cathedral in Stanton Street, and when the crypt in the cathedral was opened his brother Henry, the bishop, said that he wanted the services to be continuous between the two places, so he took as much of his Stanton Street choir as he could use up to the cathedral. When he got permission to organize a choir school he spent several summers in England and he incorporated the best of what he found there, or so much of it as was suitable, in their own choir school.
He gave up teaching in 1909, and then engaged in translating, and magazine and newspaper work, besides writing one book, "The Naval Reserve," to encourage enlistment in the Navel Reserve during the Great War.
After The Potter Record was printed, giving an account of what his father's descendants did in the Great War, some of the older members of the family expressed a regret that their children knew nothing about their wonderful Uncles and asked him, as the last of that generation, to give some account of his brothers. The Alonzo Potter Family was privately printed in 1923.
Gravestone of Frank Hunter Potter
Frank Hunter Potter
Born December 28, 1851
Died September 19, 1932
For love is strong as death:
may waters cannot quench
love, neither can the
floods drown it.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible
Potter Family History