From the 3rd floor
of the Webb City Public Library
January 22, 2025
We were organizing some items from the Webb City Historical Society when we came across a group of photographs with the names George, John, Nettie and Nelson Potter on them.
The Nelson Potter photograph (below) was taken in Nebraska, the other photographs did not note the location. We usually send photographs from other areas to genealogy or historical societies where they originated from, but we decided to look into these people before we sent out the photos.
We found Isaac and Elizabeth Potter listed on the 1860 Illinois census, three of their children were named Nelson, George and John. Nelson and his daughter, Nettie, along with his brother, George, were living in Nebraska in 1880. John Potter moved to Webb City about 1890 with his wife Marietta.
This information and other sources confirmed that we had found the family that this group of photographs belonged to and explained why they were in the files of the historical society.
John was born in February 1846 in Illinois, he married Marietta Wardell on March 27, 1872, in Kankakee County, Ill. Marietta was born on Nov. 19, 1854, in Tazewell County, Ill.
After arriving in Webb City, John found work as a carpenter. He and Marietta were organizers of the old First Methodist Church. A 1933 article listed Marietta as a charter member of the church that occupied a two-story frame building at the northeast corner of Webb and Broadway Streets. By 1947 she was the last surviving charter member of the church, which had merged in 1940 with Central United Methodist Church.
John and Marietta were the parents of three children, Jessie I., Howard Sylvester and John Wardell Potter. John Potter died on March 11, 1906, from a stroke one month after severely injuring his ankle while working on a porch. Marietta died on Feb. 16, 1950 at the age of 95.
Jessie I. Potter was born in 1875 and was a partner with Levi Gammon in the Potter & Gammon Billiards Parlor and Saloon. He died in 1910 at the age of 34 after a brief illness.
Howard S. Potter was born in 1880 and worked as a barber in Webb City and Joplin. He died on March 18, 1932, at the age of 51 from pneumonia.
John W. Potter was born on Feb. 24, 1895, in Webb City and lived all of his life at 1018 W. Austin St. John went to work for the Webb City Sentinel as a full-time employee on Sept. 3, 1911, and worked there for the next 47 years. He worked as a carrier boy, “printer’s devil,” Linotype operator and as editor, taking over after the death of Hal M. Wise Jr.
If you’re curious about the Linotype machine, here’s a CBS Sunday story about the Saguache, (Colo.) Crescent, the only newspaper in America still setting its type with a Linotype.
Potter died unexpectedly from heart failure on Dec. 17, 1958, and is buried next to his wife, Georgie, in Mount Hope Cemetery.
The other members of the Potter family are buried in the Webb City Cemetery.
The Webb City Sentinel isn’t a newspaper – but it used to be, serving Webb City, Missouri, in print from 1879-2020. This “newspaper” seeks to carry on that tradition as a nonprofit corporation.
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