William James Potter from Convinced Quaker to Prophet of Free Religion: An Epic Spiritual Oddysey

By Xlibris US

Potters name is virtually unknown to contemporary Unitarian Universalists, even by many of those who consider themselves scholars of the movement. Why forgotten? He was a founder and the mainstay of the Free Religious Association, an organization whose members radically transformed American Unitarianism. Few remember that association; still fewer, Potter. Coming of humble origins, and shy and withdrawn by temperament, he did little to put himself forward. He preferred to let his organizational skills and his brilliant and powerful writings do his talking. In the New Bedford of his thirty-two-year ministry, he was a major public figure, universally respected for his integrity and his commitment to the community, especially to the disadvantaged. He initiated many major programs and organizations. But he shied away from assertive leadership, preferring to initiate and then move on. With his congregation, he was awkward in personal relationships, avoided parish calling, and only agreed that he would be available when needed. He was respected more than loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499054552

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Richard Allen Kellaway.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014913628

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-5454-5

                Softcover        978-1-4990-5456-9

                eBook             978-1-4990-5455-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/04/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

649781

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Sources

I. Origins

II. Friends Boarding School; A New Teacher And Explorer

III. Providence Again

IV. The Normal

V. Failed Teacher

VI. Bristol Academy And Mr. Wheelwright

VII. Harvard

VIII. Into The Yard

IX. Harvard: Up And Out

X. Starting Out Again And Hitting Bottom

XI. Searching For His Vocation

XII. Vocation? Maybe! Almost!

XIII. Divinity School

XIV. Off To Europe

XV. German And Swiss Adventures

XVI. Italy And Homeward

XVII. Home Again And The Longest Four Miles

Footnotes

PREFACE

When I left the Harvard Divinity School to become the minister of the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, I soon became aware of a bronze tablet at the rear of the beautiful sanctuary. On it were the names of all the ministers who, through the centuries, had served that patrician congregation. Some of the names were familiar and distinguished; among them were Samuel West, Orville Dewey, Ephraim Peabody, and Paul Revere Frothingham. Before the latter was William James Potter. Who?

Potter’s name is virtually unknown to contemporary Unitarian Universalists, even by many of those who consider themselves scholars of the movement. Why forgotten? He was a founder and the mainstay of the Free Religious Association, an organization whose members radically transformed American Unitarianism. Few remember that association; still fewer Potter. Coming of humble origins, and shy and withdrawn by temperament, he did little to put himself forward. He preferred to let his organizational skills and his brilliant and powerful writings do his talking. In the New Bedford of his thirty two year ministry he was a major public figure, universally respected for his integrity and his commitment to the community, especially to the disadvantaged. He initiated many major programs and organizations. But he shied away from assertive leadership, preferring to initiate and then move on. With his congregation he was awkward in personal relationships, avoided parish calling, and only agreed that he would be available when needed. Respected more than loved.

As with many personally reticent individuals, he influence was far greater than his fame. Lon Ray Call, a Unitarian minister, was one of the pioneers of the mid-Twentieth Century Unitarian Fellowship movement, a mission to create small lay-led congregations. For these groups, he prepared a study program The Six Most Influential Sermons in American Unitarian History. The first three were by Unitarian saints – Channing, Emerson, and Parker. The fourth was by Potter: What is it to be a Christian? Preached in New Bedford on December 28, 1873, it alluded to a major controversy. Would Potter’s name be included in the annual yearbook of the American Unitarian Association? Why not? Because he refused to call himself a Christian. The issue at the center is with us still. Is Unitarianism (and now Universalism) a tightly defined denomination or an open and inclusive movement?

The people who heard him on that Winter day in New Bedford may not have much cared. But Potter wasn’t really addressing them. He was deeply involved with The Index, the newspaper of the Free Religious Association. Many of Potter’s sermons were prepared with the intent that they would be published. Certainly, this one was. He had a large and influential audience. And they responded vigorously.

This is the first of two volumes. It focuses on his life from birth until his beginning his first and only ministry in New Bedford in 1860. Much of the material is taken from the very extensive journals that he kept from his teen years until he started his ministry. I have chosen to quote from them extensively. His expressions are so eloquent that they deserve it. For the same reason, I have chosen to paraphrase other passages, rather than fully quoting them. Most of the quotes are from the journals, and are noted by date. More than recording and reflecting on significant public issues and events, the journals are the record of a profound spiritual and intellectual journey. Hence the title: William James Potter: From Convinced Quaker to Prophet of Free Religion, An Epic Spiritual Odyssey.

RAK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Professor Creighton Peden, Director of the Highlands Institute, proposed more than twenty years ago that we undertake a joint project on Potter. He would do the theological legacy; I would do the personal biography. He completed his share long ago. His Potter work is readily found; I’m at last catching up. Thanks to him for getting me started.

The late Professor C. Conrad Wright of the Harvard Divinity School has inspired generations of Unitarian and Universalist historians with encouragement and wise counsel. He was especially interested in the workings of institutions more than the pronouncements of religious stars. When asked why Potter is so little know, his answer was succinct: Potter never tried to be a star. Thanks to Conrad for showing me the way.

I have been a member of Collegium, An Association for Liberal Religious Studies, for several decades. Each year we are asked, ‘What have you been working on this year’; ‘Potter, of course.’ The fact that I had to answer the question every year has kept me at it. Thanks to my colleagues for asking – and encouraging. Maybe next year I’ll have a different answer. At last!

I am also grateful for assistance from several others: Paul Cyr and other staff members of the New Bedford Free Public Library, Conrad Edick Wright and the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fran O’Donnell and the staff of the Andover Harvard Library, and Peggi Medeiros, an independent New Bedford scholar.

SOURCES

The most important is, of course, the Journals themselves. Where are they?

In the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. How come so far from New Bedford? Thereby lays a tale. Potter’s grandson was Conrad Aiken, the distinguished poet, novelist, and critic. He believed that his mission was to carry on the work of his grandfather. Potter’s son, Alfred Claghorn Potter, inherited his father’s Journals. When he died, they passed to his daughter who stored them in the box that they came in. She became aware of Aiken’s biographer, Professor Joseph Killorin of Armstrong State University in Savannah, Georgia. Aiken, with his modest resources, had sold his papers to the Huntington. She asked Killorin what to do with the Journals. He suggested donating them to the Huntington. She did!

When I visited the Huntington to look for them, I entered the Reading Room, I noticed a group of busts reclining along the floor: Shakespeare, Montaigne, Milton, Socrates, William J. Potter. Oops! William James Potter. How was that possible? On reflection, I understood. The distinguished New Bedford sculptor, Walton Ricketson, had created a bust of Potter. The original is in a niche at the front of the New Bedford church. But plaster casts were made. Aiken carried his back and forth across the Atlantic. But when, as an elder, he sold his papers to the Huntington, the bust went with them. Even in that earth quake zone where Mr. Potter wound up on the Huntington floor, he was in very distinguished company, indeed. He deserved to be among them!

In addition there are many letters, mostly to his family and to his Divinity School classmate, George Washington Bartlett. These, too, are at the Huntington. Other sourced are noted in the Footnotes.

I. ORIGINS

William James Potter was ordained to the ministry by the members of the First Congregational Church & Society in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the third day after Christmas in the year 1859. In the same ceremony the congregation installed him to serve as its pastor. It was his first church. From that December 28 celebration, he served no other until his retirement thirty three years later on December 28, 1892.

Born of an old and strict Quaker family on a Dartmouth farm less than four miles from the grand Norman Gothic edifice of the New Bedford Unitarians, the spiritual journey which carried him from the customs and convictions of his origins to the progressive views of the Unitarians was immense. Who could have imagined that a shy farm boy urged by his father to stay home and carry on the family farm would assert his yearning for an education, get to Harvard College and graduate second in his class, study philosophy and tour in Europe, and for his first and only ministry be called to one of the most sophisticated and affluent congregations in America? What inner compulsions, which intellectual and spiritual mentors, inspired the quest which led Mr. Potter to become one of the most radical and progressive religious thinkers of his age? His odyssey is one of a brilliant, curious, and courageous spiritual adventurer who faced the hard questions boldly, thought them through deeply, and dared to share his reflections and responses honestly. In the process he had an immediate and profound influence on liberal religious thought, and made a deep impact on the communal life of his chosen city.

Nathaniel Potter, the first of his line in America, arrived in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, near Newport before 1639. He was among twenty nine who joined in a compact to  . . . acknowledge ourselves the legal subjects of his Majesty King Charles, and in his name to hereby bind ourselves into a civil body politicke, unto his laws according to matters of Justice. He may well have come as an indentured worker. It is not known whether he was Quaker. His son Nathaniel II was born in Portsmouth and the records show that was made a freeman only in 1677.¹

In the late Seventeenth Century a group of Quakers from Portsmouth purchased land and moved to Dartmouth in what is now Massachusetts. Nathaniel II was among them. The town itself was very large, stretching for many square miles on the Western shore of Buzzards Bay. The land had been purchased from the Native American chief Wesamequen and his son, Wamsutta. The purchasers from the Plymouth Colony included William Bradford, Captain Myles Standish, Thomas Southworth, John Winslow and John Cooke. For many decades the town remained sparsely settled, with only a few villages scattered along tidal rivers and across the mostly wooded landscape. Far away from Boston and the religious exclusivism of the Puritan oligarchy, Dartmouth and its neighbors towards Newport and Providence became places of refuge for such religious dissidents as Quakers and Baptists. The first Quaker meeting was built at Apponagansett in the southern section of Dartmouth in the late 17th century, several miles away from the Potter farm. Its first records are dated 1699. No Potters were among the original subscribers.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the members of the Society of Friends were a people set apart by conviction and discipline, as much as by geography. Their Book of Discipline defined a total way of life centered on maintaining a proper relationship with God, Christ and one’s neighbors. At the center was simplicity—of belief, of worship, and of conduct. Plain living, plain speaking and plain dress! A conviction of the worthiness of all of God’s creatures led the Dartmouth monthly meeting to begin questioning the lawfulness of human slavery as early as 1716. However, a third Nathaniel Potter, in his 1736 will, left his Negro, Caesar, to his wife. By 1772 a committee had been appointed to visit the few remaining slave holders among the members and to urge them to grant freedom. Several refused, but by 1785 no Dartmouth Quaker was a slaveholder.

Equally clear was the conviction that there ought to be religious freedom, and that the state had no right to demand tax support for a single established religion.² In 1708, by order of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, Rev. Samuel Hunt, a Puritan minister and Harvard graduate was sent to establish a congregation of the Standing Order in the Town of Dartmouth. (This was the beginning of the congregation which William James Potter would eventually serve.) This act was an unwelcome intrusion into an area which was predominantly Quaker and Baptist in sentiment. The assumption in Boston was that the Selectmen would levy a tax to pay for Hunt’s services. They refused to levy a tax to support the providing of public worship which contradicted their own religious convictions and represented a state rejection of religious toleration. (Hunt, to his credit, asked for only voluntary contributions. He did not prosper.) For refusing to levy the tax, the selectmen of Dartmouth (as well as nearby Tiverton) spent 18 months in jail while a petition was sent to the King and Privy Council in England requesting exemption. It was granted. A victory had been won for freedom of conscience and for a voluntary method of supporting religious institutions.

In the 18th century almost all the great Quaker ministers, men and women, visited Dartmouth. John Woolman was among them. In 1766 a gathering at the Apponagansett Meetinghouse brought together more than 2,000 Quakers from the surrounding region. During the Revolutionary War, the Quaker influence was so pervasive that when British troops came ashore along the waterfront Bedford Village section of the town, little resistance was offered to their burning and looting.

By the late 18th century the Potters were well established in Dartmouth. Among the Potter proprietors of the town in 1787 were Ichabod, John, Nathaniel, Stephen and Stokes. However, none of W. J. Potter’s direct forebears were among them. His father, also William, was born on August 2, 1784, the second oldest of six children. He married Anna Aiken, also of Dartmouth in 1812. Together they lived on a farm about a mile north of the village of Smith’s Mills. A few acres were all that a family could handle, even with the help of children. But there was a ready market for all the produce they could harvest in the booming nearby port of New Bedford. William was able to support his large family in simple comfort. He was a leading member of the Dartmouth Monthly meeting of Friends, frequently serving on committees, and regularly participating in the Sandwich Quarterly and New England Yearly Meetings. Apparently he was also esteemed in the town. For many years he held one or another town office, and frequently one of the most controversial as an assessor of taxes.

William and Anna also produced children, nine of them. Ruth, the first arrived in 1814. Two died in infancy. The last, William James, was born on February 1, 1829. Or at least the records of the Dartmouth Friends so attest. But in later years he came to believe that he was born on February 1, 1830. This is the date noted in the genealogical volume recording the Potter family in America, and his diary entries are based on the later date.

While little is known of William James’ early years, we can assume that the life of the family was centered on home and Meeting. Farming was an arduous undertaking; everyone in the household was expected to share in the work. The Friends Meeting near Smiths Mills was about a mile away, and the whole family regularly attended. When Potter was seven years old, his mother died. All of his older siblings, except for Elizabeth, were at least sixteen and may have already left the household, either to attend the Friends Boarding School in Providence or to teach. Potter’s diaries indicate that his father was a very taciturn man. It was probably a very lonely childhood. There were a handful