Potter, M. R.

M. R. Potter was born in Branch County, Michigan, on February 24, 1845, to David Potter and Almira Post. After moving with his family to Wisconsin and later Rochester, Minnesota, he served in the Home Guards during the Civil War to protect his local community during the Sioux uprisings. In 1866, he relocated to Schuyler County, Missouri, where he joined his father and brothers in purchasing and farming a section of school land.

Following his 1874 marriage to Viola Mattley in Indiana, the couple moved to Valley County, Nebraska, near Ord, where they homesteaded 160 acres and endured the severe prairie grasshopper scourge of 1875 to 1877. In 1902, they sold their Nebraska property and moved to Selma, California, establishing a fifty-acre fruit and alfalfa farm on Floral Avenue one mile northeast of the city. Together they raised three children named Iva, Edward O., and an adopted son J. H. Potter, while Potter remained active in local civic affairs as a political Progressive despite suffering severe vision loss in his later years.