ALBERT F. POTTER 



107 



a member of the Connecticut Academy 

 of Sciences, an associate editor of The 

 Forestry Quarterly, a member of the 

 Royal Arboricultural Society of Eng- 

 land, member Societe Forestiere de 

 Franche Compte et Belfort (France), 

 and a member of the Oesterreichische 

 Reichsforstverein (Germany). He is 

 also a member of the Century Club of 



New York and the Graduate Club of 

 New Haven. In 1903 he married Miss 

 Marion Welch of New Haven. His 

 summers are largely spent at Milford, 

 Pennsylvania, where the Yale Forest 

 School students receive field and camp 

 instruction. 



Mr. Graves assumes his office as 

 Forester on the first of February. 



ALBERT F, POTTER 



ALBERT F. POTTER, who has 

 been designated by the Secretary 

 of Agriculture as Associate For- 

 ester, is a western man with a wide 

 knowledge of the conditions existing 

 west of the Mississippi River. 



Mr. Potter was born in Amador 

 County, Cal., November 14, 1859, and 

 spent his early childhood on a farm. 

 He came to Oakland, Cal., in 1867 and 

 thence to San Francisco in 1871. He 

 was a pupil in the public schools of 

 Oakland and graduated from the Hayes 

 Valley Grammar School of San Fran- 

 cisco in 1874. Subsequently he studied 

 bookkeeping at a night school, serving 

 as an office boy during the day in a 

 sewing-machine establishment. His em- 

 ployer advanced him successively to 

 the position of shipping clerk, sales- 

 man, buyer, correspondent, bookkeeper, 

 and cashier. In 1883 he resigned his 

 position on account of illness, and went 

 to Apache County, Ariz., where, after 

 regaining his health, he successfully 

 conducted a live stock business. 



Mr. Potter was exposed to all the 

 vicissitudes of life to be found on the 

 western frontier, and has watched the 

 West grow from a thinly-settled wilder- 

 ness to its present state of settlement 

 and wealth. In 1893 he was appointed 

 inspector for the Live Stock Sanitary 

 Commission of Arizona, in which ca- 

 pacity he served for two years. He 

 also served as county treasurer during 



1895 ^^^ 1896. Owing to continued 

 drought, he disposed of his cattle in- 

 terests in 1895, and in 1896 engaged in 

 sheep raising, continuing in this busi- 

 ness until 1900. While in the sheep 

 business he took an active part in the 

 organization of the Arizona Wool 

 Growers' Association, of which he was 

 secretary for two years, and aided in 

 effecting an agreement allowing a 

 proper use of the forest reserves for 

 grazing purposes. It was while sec- 

 retary of this association that he met 

 Mr. Pinchot, then Chief of the Bureau 

 of Forestry, and accompanied him on 

 a trip of investigation which the Sec- 

 retary of the Interior had requested 

 Mr. Pinchot to make in cooperation 

 with Professor Coville, to determine the 

 effects of sheep grazing upon the west- 

 ern forest reserves. 



Mr. Pinchot, being struck by Mr. 

 Potter's wide knowledge of western 

 conditions, persuaded him to become a 

 member of the Bureau of Forestry, and 

 Mr. Potter accepted an appointment in 

 that bureau in 1901 as an expert to 

 investigate grazing problems in the 

 Federal Forest Reserves, a work which 

 his special training and knowledge en- 

 abled him to do very efficiently. Dur- 

 ing the early part of 1902 he examined 

 proposed forest reserves in Arizona, 

 and recommended the boundary lines 

 for the Santa Rita. Chiricahua, and 

 Mount Graham forest reserves, which 



