Image of the Month for June 2007

Wilburn Daniel Potter was born near Canton, New York, on July 13, 1863. He attended Canton High School and graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1886. After teaching school in Colton, New York, for several years, he entered St. Lawrence Theological School and graduated in the class of 1890. He served Universalist churches in Huntingville, Québec; Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts; Oneonta and Cortland, New York. He contracted tuberculosis and spent his final years in the Adirondacks and in Canton, New York, where he died on June 2, 1917. His obituary describes him as "musical in taste and talents" and says that he composed both lyrics and music for home songs.

One of his prayers is included as the entry for March 21 (p. 83) in The Optimist's Good Morning, a book of family devotions compiled by Florence Hobart Perin (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1921). The library's copy of this work was scanned as part of the Harvard-Google Project.

For more information, see Universalist Leader, August 4, 1917, p. 503. [Cabinet card photo, dated Christmas 1898, of (from left) Marion E. Potter, Wilburn H. Potter (1892-1967), and Wilburn D. Potter: bMS 900/38 (2)]

For information on obtaining a copy of this image or using it for publication, see the library's Digital Reproduction Policy.

To see past images of the month, visit the images of people and images of congregations pages.

These images, often buried deep in our collections, are selected by Clifford Wunderlich; please address corrections to him.