Potter family papers

The Potter Family Papers, 1795-1887, are mainly the financial records and deeds of Jabez Turner Potter, 1796-1871. A surveyer of Hamden, Connecticut, his ledgers record payments to laborers, accounts as collector of highway taxes, sales of farm produce, oysters, hides and wood, and contracting work such as road repair, quarrying and carting stone, and masonry on houses and stores. Most of the papers and records date from the 1840's through the 1860's. There are also six volumes of accounts, 1825-1882, apparently all kept in the same hand, of a general store in the vicinity of Fair Haven, North Haven, or Hamden, Conn. The proprietors may have been Rowe & Tuttle, since large sums of money were regularly drawn from the business through the Rowe & Tuttle account. The store of John Rowe and Smith Tuttle was the principal store in Fair Haven, now a section of New Haven. However, the connection between Rowe & Tuttle and the Potter Family is uncertain. It is known that Smith Tuttle's sister, Mercy, married in 1810 Isaac Blakeslee, whose twin sons, Lucius Merrick Blakeslee and Julius Merritt Blakeslee, were clerks for, or in business with their uncle, Smith Tuttle. In 1885, Jabez Turner Potter's daughter, Eliza Ann (1826-) married another Isaac Blakeslee, probably a relative of the elder Blakeslee (see Potter Genealogy, Part V, p. 2 and Tuttle Genealogy, p. 284). The parents of the donor of these papers, Georgina Johnson, were George A. and Mary (Blakeslee) Johnson. The day books and ledger record the sale of groceries and general merchandise and goods received.

Box 1 of the papers contains 13 folders of deeds, 1795-1870, for land in New Haven, North Haven, Fair Haven, Hamden, East Haven, and North Branford. Most of the deeds are those of Jabez Potter. Other Potter relatives and prominent area citizens cited in the deeds are: Elmon, Evelyn, and Philemon Blakeslee; Frederick Croswell; Caleb Mix; Hervey and Eliza Treat; Jared Foot; and Lemuel, Timothy (b.1796?), Timothy (1792-1853), Martha (Turner), and Sherman Benjamin (1806-1860) Potter.

The Potter Family Papers include very little correspondence and are primarily a source of information on the economic and agricultural history of Hamden and surrounding towns.