Horatio Potter
Bishop of New York; American Episcopalian bishop (1802-1887)
Horatio Potter (February 9, 1802 – January 2, 1887), was an educator and the sixth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
Dearth of biographical information
Potter "shrank from public notice, left no literary monument and has, regrettably, no biography. He is scarcely mentioned in the biographies of his older brother Alonzo, Bishop of Pennsylvania, and of his nephew, Henry Codman Potter, his successor in the See of New York." His life is described in a book about the Potter family of colonial New England.
Early life and education
Horatio Potter, D.D., LL.D., S.T.D. was born on February 9, 1802, the youngest of the nine children to Joseph and Anne Potter. Through his grandparents Thomas Potter and Esther Sheldon, respectively, Horatio was descended from the co-founders of Rhode Island, William Arnold and Roger Williams. The Potters were Quaker farmers who lived near Beekman (now LaGrange) in Dutchess County, New York. "Their Quaker devotion appears in the names they bestowed on their oldest son, Paraclete, and only daughter, Philadelphia." Potter spent his earliest years at the family homestead.
Paraclete Potter, Horatio's elder brother, was established in Poughkeepsie, New York, where the Poughkeepsie Academy was located. Therefore, in 1812, he had his ten-year-old brother Horatio move in with him and enroll in the Academy, which offered a better education than did the district schools in Beekman. While living with his brother, Horatio went with him to Christ Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie, and he was impressed by the worship service.
The public source identifies “Horatio Potter” as bishop of New York; American Episcopalian bishop (1802-1887). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Horatio, Potter and Bishop.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15493141. VIAF identifies the subject as 75289881. The Library of Congress control number is n85158271. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1887 and 1812.
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This entry incorporates text from “Horatio Potter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.