Emaline Juliette "Juliet" (Fenn) Potter (1830-1909)

FENN, POTTER, BLANCHARD, LOCKWOOD, SHELDON

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 3/30/2017 at 20:35:06

From Nevada Representative May 25, 1909 (page 4)

OBITUARY

DEATH OF MRS. E. J. POTTER

Mrs. Emiline Juliet Potter died Monday morning about eight o'clock at the home of her daughter, Mrs. A. W. Lockwood of this city after a serious illness that dated from about the middle of April. Her illness, however was not so much the result of any disease as it was a breaking down on account of age and frail condition. For several days her condition had been recognized as hopeless, and the end came peacefully and as a release.

Juliet Fenn--as she was known as a girl--was born at Davenport, in southern New York, August 7, 1830,, and she died as stated at Nevada, Iowa, May 24, 1909, aged 78 years, 9 months and 17 days. Her family removed in her early childhood to the near-by town of Jeffersonville, where there as a good academy, and there, being a rather precocious child, she started to school when she was four years old. She progressed rapidly and steadily in her school work, and she graduated from the New York State Normal School at Albany in the class of 1847 when she was less than seventeen year of age. At this time her mother was in failing health, and she returned home and remained there caring for her mother until the latter's death about two years later. After this event the family removed to Prattsville in the same locality in New York, where the father was editor of a paper, and she taught school in various places, returning to Prattsville to be married there on June 22, 1851, to Edwin B. Potter, a young lawyer of that vicinity.

After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Potter went at once to Gilboa, New York, where he was then practicing and where they remained for four years. Then they went to Lockport for a year and a half, and in 1857 they made the long jump to Iowa and located at Iowa Center, where Mrs. Potter's sister and her husband, Dr. and Mrs. M. D. Sheldon were already located. Mr. Potter was inclined to go yet farther west and make their location in Kansas; but Mrs. P. thought they had come far enough and to this sentiment he yielded. They remained for three years at Iowa Center, and then came up to Nevada, where they continued to reside for more than twenty years. During this period Mr. Potter practiced law, served a part of a term in the state senate, ran for a while a Democratic newspaper and conducted a hardware business. Mrs. Potter taught in the city schools for a time, was one of the organizers locally of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and was active always in whatever was of interest to the women of the village. In the early 80's Mr. Potter and his son Major went to Denver to look up a new home, and after a time Mrs. Potter followed. They then made their home with their son Major at Denver until the fall of 1901, when the son died very suddenly while on a visit to the old home in Nevada. Mr. Potter's death followed on Christmas day of the same year, and the following August Mrs. Potter returned to Nevada and made her home there for the rest of her days with her daughter, Mrs. Lockwood.

As had been already indicated, Mrs. Potter was a woman of exceptional talent, of most excellent education and of zealous interest in whatever came properly within the range of her activities. It is just to add that this interest extended to politics and that in the trying days of war and reconstruction the sentiments of herself and her husband were perfectly understood and quite heartily disapproved by the majority of the people about them; but such resentments her manifest worth and her activities in all matters of common interest surely overcame, and she was in fact one of the best esteemed, as she was one of the most capable women of the community. After the removal to Colorado she continued her activity in temperance work, and she served for two years as state lecturer and much also as contributor to the state organ of the W. C. T. U. After the return to Nevada she was in frail health and past seventy years of age, and she had neither the strength nor the inclination to take up again her old interest in affairs. She lived here quietly, maintaining most pleasant relations with the old friends but not seeking new ones, and seeming to feel that her work in life was done as indeed it had been well done.

Mrs. Potter was the mother of four children, Addie, who was born in the early days at Gilboa; Allie, who was born at Lockport; Edwin, who was born and died at Iowa Center; and Major, who was born and also died at Nevada. The two daughters survive, Mrs. H. P. Blanchard of Cheyenne, Wyoming and Mrs. A. W. Lockwood of Nevada. There are also of near relative surviving, her brother, E. Dwight Fenn of Manchester, Michigan; her sister, Mrs. Annette Sheldon, now of St. Paul; nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

The funeral will be conducted from the Lockwood home in this city Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.