The Potts Family Burial Ground
Historic Pottstown Walking Tour
From our earliest times, the cemeteries of Pottstown have been for the most part associated with churches. The original Sprogell burying ground was an exception, as was that of the Potts, Rutter and Hobart families (although this cemetery was in a sense a “church yard” of the Friends' Meeting House which once stood next to it). Part of John Potts' plans for Pottstown included promoting the community's religious needs; and to that end he donated the land to the Society of Friends, who built the first place of worship in our town, a one story brick building on King Street between Chestnut and Penn Streets. The Sprogell interments of 1776 and 1718 are the oldest, and with those at St. Gabriel's Church in Douglassville, pre-date the ones here.
This is is [sic] the resting place of John Potts, Thomas Rutter, III, Dr. Jonathan Potts, Nathaniel Potts Hobart, and other members of the family. Thomas Rutter, III, was co-owner with Samuel Potts of Warwick Furnace, one of the most productive and important forges in the state. As early as March 1778, they engaged with the Committee of Safety in Philadelphia to cast canon [sic] for the army and throughout the struggle were a chief source of ordinance [sic] for the army. Dr. Jonathan Potts, a friend of Benjamin Franklin and an early proponent of innoculation for smallpox, died at the age of 36 due to an illness contracted as a result of the arduous task of tending the wounded at Valley Forge. John Potts was laid to rest not at Pottsgrove Manor, but in the cemetery he himself had selected on Chestnut Street, in the heart of the town of which he had dreamed.
Marker is on Chestnut Street, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
