POTTER, ALONZO. 



703 



POTTER ALONZO, D. D., LL. D., an Episcopal 

 clergyman and author, Bishop of the Protestant 

 Episcopal Church for the Diocese of Pennsyl- 

 vania, born in Beekraan (now La Grange), 

 Dutchess County, New York, July 10, 1800 ; 

 died in San Francisco, California, July 4, 1865. 

 His ancestors were among the early settlers of 

 Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and his parents had 

 removed to Dutchess County but a few years 

 previous to his birth. He received his early 

 school education at Poughkeepsie. under the 

 tuition of the celebrated Daniel H. Barnes, and 

 entered Union College, where he graduated in 

 1818 with the highest honors of his class, 

 though one of its youngest members. In 1819 

 he was appointed tutor in Union College, and 

 in 1821 elected Professor of Mathematics and 

 Natural Philosophy. He had united with 

 St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church in 

 Philadelphia soon after his graduation, and 

 having turned his attention to theology, was 

 ordained deacon in 1821, and priest in 1824. 

 In 1825 the corporation of Geneva (now Hobart) 

 College elected him President of that institu- 

 tion, but he declined the honor. In 1826 he 

 was called to the rectorship of St. Paul's 

 Church, Boston, where he remained till 1831, 

 and was successful in bringing the church up 

 from a condition of almost hopeless depression 

 to a commanding and influential position in the 

 city. In 1831 he was recalled to Union Col- 

 lege as Vice-President and Professor of Moral 

 Philosophy. He had married the only daugh- 

 ter of President Nott, and that able educator, 

 who appreciated his rare abilities, desired, after 

 his nearly thirty years of severe labor as a col- 

 lege President, a vigorous and accomplished 

 collaborator on whom he might devolve a por- 

 tion of his own multifarious duties. For four- 

 teen years Professor Potter filled this responsi- 

 ble position with great acceptance, winning 

 with each year new honors, for his zealous 

 and efficient labors in the promotion of educa- 

 tion, not simply within the college walls, but in 

 the wider sphere of the common schools, in the 

 training of the Normal schools, and the elevat- 

 ing and ennobling influences of the Lowell In- 

 stitute Lectures. In September, 1845, he was 

 elected Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, 

 and though he had twice previously declined 

 the Episcopal dignity, he now, though with un- 

 feigned reluctance, accepted it, relinquishing 

 with sorrow his relations to the College in 

 which more than half of his life had been 

 passed, twenty-one years of it as an instructor, 

 greatly to the grief of the friends of the institu- 

 tion, who had come to hope that in him they 

 were to have an able successor to the learned 

 and efficient President who for so many years 

 had been at its head. Professor Potter's last 

 official act in connection with the college was 

 the delivery of an eloquent oration on its semi- 

 centennial anniversary, July 22, 1845. Hence- 

 forth, though with scarcely abated zeal in the 

 promotion of education in its widest sense, 

 Bishop Potter devoted his best energies to the 



performance of the duties connected with the 

 Episcopal office. His labors were arduous and 

 manifold ; his diocese was large and the care of 

 it engrossing, and there came upon him, in addi- 

 tion to the ordinary duties of the episcopate, 

 other questions of rubric and ritual, of parochial 

 and ministerial differences, of harmonizing op- 

 posing classes and interests, and of training and 

 drawing out his clergy for the great works of 

 religious philanthropy to which he sought to 

 subsidize them. In all particulars he was a 

 model Christian bishop, grave and dignified as 

 became his holy office, yet genial and kindly in 

 manner, his heart full of the largest charities, 

 and ever ready to lend a helping hand to every 

 good work. He had especially identified him- 

 self with two great enterprises in his diocese, 

 the organization of the Hospital of the Protes- 

 tant Episcopal Church, one of the largest and 

 most admirably conducted hospitals in the coun- 

 try, and the establishment of the Divinity School 

 of the Church, in Philadelphia, which, through 

 his exertions, was liberally endowed and pro- 

 vided with an able faculty and all the best ap- 

 pliances for theological instruction. His zeal 

 for education was manifest in his efforts for the 

 improvement of the common school system 

 of Pennsylvania, his promotion of measures of 

 special education, and his exertions for the estab- 

 lishment of the school for the feeble-minded, 

 now in successful operation at Media, and of 

 whose board he was president till his death. 



In the midst of his abundant labors labors 

 too severe for even his vigorous constitution 

 and stalwart frame, he was smitten in 1858 with 

 paralysis, and for a time withdrew from his 

 sphere of duty. By the advice of his physicians 

 he spent a year in Europe, trying, but without 

 apparent benefit, the water-cure at Great Mal- 

 vern, and subsequently, after a short visit to 

 London and Oxford, spending the winter at 

 Pan, and the spring in Italy. The outbreak 

 of the Italian war, in the summer of 1859, com- 

 pelled his return to the United States, and he 

 came home with his health partially though 

 not fully restored. The years that followed 

 were years of untiring and intense labor. The 

 organization of the Divinity School, to which 

 we have already alluded, and of the school for 

 the feeble-minded, in addition to the ordinary 

 duties of the Episcopate, in a time when men's 

 minds were unsettled, and the nation was on 

 the eve of great events, as well as the cares 

 and responsibilities thrown upon him by his 

 commanding position in the House of Bishops, 

 might well have tasked all his energies. When 

 the war commenced, he at once took strong 

 ground in behalf of the constituted authorities, 

 and throughout the entire struggle his sup- 

 port was ardent and glowing. An active and 

 efficient member of the Christian Commission, 

 a zealous and earnest friend of emancipation, 

 finding time amid his multifarious duties to 

 visit almost daily the Government hospitals 

 and present the truths and consolations of the 

 gospel to the wounded and dying, he set a 



