San
Joaquin County
Biographies
GEORGE L. POTTER
A wide-awake, efficient and very
popular representative of the bank fraternity of San Joaquin County is George
L. Potter, to whose experience and enterprise much of the success of the Loan Department
of the Commercial and Savings Bank of Stockton may well be ascribed. He was born on his father’s ranch, fifteen
miles east of that city, on February 14, 1883, the son of Seth W. and Mary A.
(Kiel) Potter, both natives of Wisconsin, and both still living. His father located in San Joaquin County in
1871, and there went to work on various ranches. Later he found employment in the Minor
Blacksmith Shop at Atlanta, and after awhile he bought the establishment. Later still he purchased 320 acres of land
which he farmed to grain for many years.
He still resides on fifty acres, a part of the old home ranch. Twelve children were born on the home-place,
and nine are still in the enjoyment of life.
Mary C. has become Mrs. C. A. Hedges.
Charles Wilbur and George L. come next.
Clara E. is the wife of R. A. Cooke, of Tulare County. Hattie E. is Mrs. E. Gall, of Milton. Seth N. is with the Sperry Flour Company at
Stockton. Fred K. is farming the home
ranch. Laura A. is the wife of Ed Lloyd
of San Francisco, and Dwight S. is a student at the University of California.
George Potter attended the Zinc
House, now the Atlanta School, and after working on the home ranch, he became
foreman of Frank South’s ranch near Clovis, in Fresno County, a tract of 2,000
acres given up to the cultivation of grain.
At the end of four years he located in Fresno and learned the glazier’s
trade, in the Madera Planing Mill, and in time he became the head glazier. Coming to Stockton, he pursued a course of
study at the Western School of Commerce, and later he enjoyed a course in
salesmanship under the direction of the Sheldon Correspondence School at
Chicago. Then he entered the real estate
firm of Dietrich & Leistner, taking charge of the rent department, and
later he went in for sales management, having charge of the subdivisions,
Burkett Acres, Bour’s Park, Brookside, Ripon Colony,
the Potter Tract, the Escalon Colony Tract, the Oaks Subdivision, and the North
Oaks Division. After having given eleven
years to real estate development with this company, he accepted an offer, in
September, 1918, from the Commercial and Savings Bank of Stockton to take
charge of their loan department; and he has served in that capacity every
since.
At Stockton in 1921, Mr. Potter
married Violet Y. Rushing, a native of Tuolumne County, and their home is
blessed by two children of Mr. Potter by a former marriage, Leroy D. and Galen
D. Mr. Potter belongs to the Yosemite Club, and to the Woodmen of the World; and he is a member of
Lodge No. 218 of the Elks at Stockton.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George H., History of San
Joaquin County, California , Page
1563. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases