Huntington History

In 1957, a chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was established in Amityville.  One of the early members was Naomi Williams Giffiths, who suggested the chapter be named after her ancestor Dr. Gilbert Potter (1725-1786), who had lived in Huntington village.  On Saturday, October 5, 2019, members of the Gilbert Potter chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution held a ceremony to honor the memory of Dr. Potter and his wife Elizabeth and to place special DAR markers on their graves.  Below is an account of these two American heroes. 

Gilbert Potter’s original headstone and the DAR tablets for him and his wife Elizabeth.

Gilbert Potter was born on January 8, 1725 in Huntington.  He studied medicine with Dr. Jared Elliot of Guilford, CT.   At the age of 20, he served as surgeon on a privateer against the French during King George’s War which was a sideline to the War of Austrian Succession.  Dr. Potter returned to Huntington and married Elizabeth Williams on February 23, 1749.

The Potters had seven children, only three of whom lived to adulthood.  A son named Peleg was born in May 1750 and died nine months later on February 27, 1751.  Another son was born a year and a day later and also named Peleg.  He died at age 13 in 1764.  His epitaph is moving:

To this sad Stone whoe’er thou art draw near
Here lies the Youth most loved the Son most dear
Who ne’er knew joy but Friendship might divide
Or gave his father Grief but when he died.

The couple’s third child, Sarah, lived to adulthood and married Captain William Rogers, who was lost in a storm on the Long Island Sound in October 1780.  Sarah died in 1823.

A second daughter, named after her mother, was born in 1758 and died before her second birthday.  A third son, Nathaniel, was born in 1761.   Nathaniel Potter was a silver smith who also served in the New York State Assembly and as a judge.  When he died in 1841, he left a generous bequest to further the education of indigent children.

Daughter Saraphina, was born in 1762.  She died at age 15 in 1782, when the British occupied a fort built at the top of the Old Burying Ground near the family plot.  Consequently, Saraphina is buried elsewhere in the cemetery.

Gilbert and Elizabeth’s last child, Martha, was born in 1764.  She married Gilbert Williams, who died in 1809.  Martha died in 1813, leaving behind several children, whom her bachelor brother Nathaniel raised.

In 1756, Gilbert Potter served as a captain during the French & Indian War at Ticonderoga. In 1758, he was put in charge of an army hospital in Schenectady.   After the war he returned to Huntington to continue his medical practice.

In February 1771, at a Town meeting it was decided that small pox inoculations could only be given by Gilbert Potter or Daniel Wiggins.  The two doctors had to provide a hospital to quarantine the inoculated.  Potter’s hospital was in Cold Spring Harbor.

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Dr. Potter was a leading advocate in Suffolk County for the patriot cause.   At a meeting in Smithtown on September 5, 1775, officers were chosen for the First or Western Regiment of Suffolk County.  Potter was elected Lieutenant Colonel.

A few months after his election as Lieutenant Colonel, as war with Great Britain became more likely, Potter wrote a letter to John Sloss Hobart, who was representing Suffolk County at the New York Provincial Congress.  Potter complained that the residents of Queens County (which at that time included what is now Nassau County) were opposed to the patriot cause and were working to undermine the effort.  He advocated for a force sufficient enough to subdue the loyalists in Queens.  He wrote:

Huntington, Dec 10, 75

SIR—You will receive this by Major Brush, who is appointed by the Committee to lay before the Congress, the state of the town as to their slackness in military preparations, as also that we have great reason to believe all methods are used by our neighbors to make them indifferent in this great contest.  We not only beg your advice but assistance, for it is my opinion, if there is not a sufficient number of men immediately sent to effectually subdue Queens Co., and to intimidate the people among us a great many from here will soon be in a little better condition than the rebels of Queens Co., which we have great reason to believe is making interest with our slaves and other servants.  I have exerted myself in my station but if nothing is done by your House, I must be obliged to desist; but as to myself as an individual, I am determined to live and die free.

 I am sir, your most humble servant,

 Gilbert Potter.

 To John S. Hobart Esq in Pro. Congress.

The next month, Gilbert Potter and 17 other prominent men were chosen as a war committee for Huntington.  When news of the Declaration of Independence arrived in Huntington on July 22, 1776, the citizens celebrated by burning an effigy of King George III on the Town Common and then continued the celebration at Platt’s Tavern where they drank thirteen patriotic toasts.  Dr. Potter gave a speech during which he quoted a poetic summary of the patriot cause:

Rudely forced to drink tea, Massachusetts in anger,

Spills the Tea on John Bull; John falls on to bang her,

Massachusetts, enraged, calls her neighbors to aid,

And give Master John, a severe bastinade,

Now good men of the law pray, who is in fault,

The one who began, or resents the assault?

As the Battle of Long Island commenced in Brooklyn in August 1776, Potter wrote a hasty letter to Brigadier General Nathaniel Woodhull.  Potter had just return to Huntington from Jamaica and reported being told that British ships had landed a number of troops near Wading River and began shooting cattle.  Potter expected the British ships to arrive in Huntington the next day.  Potter mustered the militia to prepare to defend the town.  He concluded by reporting that “Our women are in great tumult.”

The next day Potter sent 100 men to Jamaica to assist General Woodhull in driving cattle on the Hempstead Plain to keep them falling into British hands.  The effort was unsuccessful and Woodhull was killed.

After Huntington was occupied by British and Loyalists forces on September 1, 1776, residents were ordered to swear an oath of allegiance to the king.  A majority of the male inhabitants of Huntington—549 to be exact—signed the oath of allegiance.  Gilbert Potter was not one of those 549 men.  Instead he fled to Connecticut.

Dr. Potter was in his fifties during the war and is believed to have confined his activities to clandestine operations.  He would reportedly sneak back into to Huntington from Connecticut to visit his wife and family and to spy on the British troops.  Although not part of the now famous Culper Spy Ring, Dr. Potter provided a similar service for the patriot cause.

In the meantime, Elizabeth took care of the family and also assumed her husband’s medical practice.  She was reported to be as good a doctor as he was.  One of the patients she treated was a young English sailor named Hardy, who was not much older than her teenage son Nathaniel.  Midshipman Hardy, who was stationed on a British navy ship in Huntington Bay, somehow contracted smallpox.  He was taken to the smallpox hospital on Park Avenue where Elizabeth Potter tended to him.  She eventually had him moved to her house on Wall Street where she continued to care for him and where he struck up a friendship of sorts with her teenage son.  Eventually, the sailor fully recovered and returned to his ship.

After the war, Dr. Potter returned to Huntington and resumed his medical practice.  He died in 1786 and Elizabeth died in 1811.  But the story doesn’t end with their deaths.

Shortly after Elizabeth died, the United States was again at war with Great Britain.  Again, British war ships patrolled the waters off Long Island.  By now Nathaniel Potter, Gilbert and Elizabeth’s son, was a successful silversmith and also owned a sloop called the Amazon.  On a trip from Huntington to Albany, the Amazon was seized by the British.  One of the crew on the Amazon was Nathaniel Potter’s nephew Henry.

The young American sailor was vocal in denouncing the British.  He damned the British, their flag, and the Commodore, who put Henry in irons.  Nathaniel Potter was taken out to the ship to ransom his ship back from the British and look after his nephew.  He was shocked to see that the commander of the British fleet was the same sailor his mother had tended to during the Revolution more than 30 years earlier.  Realizing who the intemperate American was, Commodore Hardy ordered him released.  The next day, the Commodore hosted Nathaniel Potter at a lavish dinner on board the British ship where he gave a glowing tribute to the woman who had saved his life.