Robert POTTER, Congress, NC (18001842)

POTTER Robert , a Representative from North Carolina; born in Granville County, near Williamsboro, N.C., about 1800; attended the common schools; midshipman in the United States Navy 1815-1821; studied law; was admitted to the bar and practiced in Halifax, Halifax County, N.C.; member of the State house of commons in 1826 and 1828; moved to Oxford, Granville County, N.C., in 1827 and continued the practice of law; elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Congresses and served from March 4, 1829, until his resignation in November 1831; again a member of the State house of commons from 1834 until his expulsion in January 1835; moved to Harrison County, Tex., in 1835 and settled on a farm overlooking Lake Soda, near Marshall; member of the convention that declared the independence of Texas March 2, 1836; during the Texas Revolution was secretary of the navy in the cabinet of the Provincial President, David G. Burnett; represented the Red River District in the Texas Congress 1837-1841; participated in the Regulator-Moderator War in east Texas as a leader of the Harrison County Moderators; his home being surrounded by the Regulators on March 2, 1842, he ran to the edge of Lake Soda and dived in, his body sinking to the bottom riddled with bullets; interred at ``Potter's Point,'' a bluff near his home; reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery, at Austin, in 1931.

Bibliography

Fisher, Ernest G. Robert Potter: Founder of the Texas Navy. Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1976; Shearer, Ernest Charles. Robert Potter, Remarkable North Carolinian and Texan. Houston: University of Houston Press, 1951.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present