Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Georgiana Field (Mrs. D. Frederick) Potter, 1869-1954
By Jocelyn Mitiguy, undergraduate student, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Georgiana Field Potter was born on November 18, 1869, in Massachusetts to John Quincy Adams Field, and Sylvia Caroline Wellington. The family resided in Quincy, Massachusetts, where Georgiana's younger brother Harvey Adams was born in 1875. Georgiana Potter was taught how to read and write at a young age. When Georgiana was 22 she met engineer Daniel Fredric Potter, also a 22 year-old Massachusetts native. They married on June 21, 1892, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Georgiana and Daniel had one son, Daniel F. Potter, Jr., who was born on September 15, 1893, in Buffalo, New York.
In 1903, Potter was elected and served as the Corresponding Secretary of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, a position she held at least through 1905. On March 14, 1904, she spoke on the history of women's contributions to society, as well as disputed a number of anti-suffrage arguments at the Oakdale Assembly in Buffalo. In 1910, Potter was elected (or possibly reelected) to be Corresponding Secretary at the 42nd annual convention of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, which took place in Niagara Falls, October 18-21.
In addition to suffrage work, Potter was active in other local causes. In May,1906, she shared a paper in the literature hour titled “Story Telling from Good Literature” at the Western New York branch of the Women's Federation Convention. During World War I, she served as a county chairman for the Women's Committee of Speakers for the War Savings Stamp organization in Erie County. She also participated in the Buffalo chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, listed in the Directory of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1908.
Potter's husband, Frederick, passed away at age 71, in 1940. Her son Daniel Potter Jr. passed away at the age of 50 in November of 1943 in New York. Georgiana survived them both, dying at the age of 85 in 1954, in Buffalo, New York.
Sources:
Ancestry.com
Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, Brooklyn, NY: Eagle Building, 1905, 325.
The Buffalo Commercial. Buffalo, New York, October 23, 1903. Newspapers.com
The Buffalo Times. Buffalo, New York, March 16, 1904. Newspapers.com
Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society Research Library, Daughters of the American Colonists. Buffalo Chapter (N.Y.), and Georgiana Field Potter. Speeches and Scrapbook. 1930.
Directory of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Washington, D.C November 13, 1908.
Ida Husted Harper, et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 6 (1922), 448. [LINK]
Daniel J. Sweeny, History of Buffalo and Erie County, 1914-1919. Buffalo, NY: Committee of One Hundred, Finley H. Green, Chairman, 1919, 363.
Wyoming County Times. Warsaw, N.Y October 28, 1903. New York State Historic Newspapers
Yates County Chronicle. Penn Yan, N.Y. September 27 1905. New York State Historic Newspapers