Andrew Jackson Potter - The Fighting Parson
The Fighting Parson and his connection to the Hill Country
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| Andrew Jackson Potter in the pulpit, with a gun resting nearby. |
This week, I’ve been researching a topic for a speaking engagement, the history of a local church. While researching the church, I came across a pastor with an interesting nickname and had to know more.
Andrew Jackson Potter, the “Fighting Parson,” was mentioned in a lot of the materials I was using, but none of them gave clues as to how he earned that title. Of course, I had to drop everything and find out more about the Potter.
It wasn’t long before I discovered a man who led an incredible, action-packed life and a story of redemption. While Andrew Jackson Potter only lived briefly in Kerrville, he played a vital role in the spiritual growth in early Kerr County.
As a matter of fact, he played that role in many communities across the Texas frontier and deserves to be remembered.
In the biography “Andrew Jackson Potter, The Fighting Parson of the Texas Frontier” published in 1881, the Rev. H.A. Graves wrote, “The man whose life is plainly sketched in this little volume gives us a specimen of both vicious and virtuous habits — his life having been a tripartite — evil, good, ministerial. His early years were passed in the haunts of vice, his after-life in the ministry of Jesus Christ. But in all the strange and crooked paths over which he traveled in boyhood and youth, there was a manifest protective power about him from an occult super human force, sheltering and guiding unerringly to a certain ultimate, an event to be reached by intelligent design.”
Graves’ writing style is typical of the day, florid and meandering.
THE EARLY YEARS
Potter, born in 1830, was one of seven children. His parents, Joshua and Martha Potter, were too poor to afford even a basic education to their children. Three months was the extent of Andrew Potter’s schooling. However, he continued work on his spelling after leaving school and could eventually read a little from an easy reading book, but he did not learn to write.
Young Potter and his siblings were orphaned in 1840 and left to fend for themselves, without even a roof over their heads. At the age of 10, he found employment as a jockey with a “rough, undisciplined horse racing crowd” and soon became well educated in gambling, card playing and horse racing.
When Mexico declared war on the United States in 1846, Potter enlisted — at the age of 16 — in Capt. Mack’s company under Gen. Sterling Price’s command. His service in the army over the next five years included driving ox teams to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas and fighting in skirmishes with Mexican soldiers and Native Americans.
According to his biography, Potter “traversed dreary, uncivilized regions, quite a number of times… making hair-breadth escapes from the air-piercing arrow and the hurled lance of the cruel warrior.”
In 1851, Potter left the service. He was encamped with his unit in a place he referred to as “The Hole in the Ground.” One night, he noticed a train of some 20 small wagons, drawn by oxen and “milch cows” camped near his post. Potter went to find out who the campers were and where they were going. He was surprised to find women and children in the camp, saying it was a strange sight in that “distant wilderness.”
Potter discovered that the group were Mormons, opposed to Brigham Young and the practice of polygamy. They were traveling to the mouth of the Colorado River in California, where they were charged with a mission to build a large city there. They envisioned an independent kingdom, founded by a prophet named Mr. Bruster, who was waiting for them in California. Knowing how dangerous a trip across the desert southwest could be, it impressed the young soldier that the Mormons were traveling without weapons to protect them against attacks from natives or bandits. The group believed God would shelter them from harm on the perilous journey and they didn’t need the protection. Potter was also concerned that the Mormons had goods to trade with the Mexicans in the area, but none of them could speak Spanish.
The sect of Mormons told Potter that the land of Bethsullie — their name for Texas — was the land of the wicked. They were also predicting the imminent downfall of the United States. They believed that the territory west of the Rio Grande River was the home for righteous people and were eager to join their brethren in California to establish their kingdom.
Potter felt the group needed his help, so he arranged to travel with them for free in exchange for his help in communicating with the Mexican people to sell their goods.
According to Potter, “I settled up with the quartermaster, and set out with that strangely deluded people in the long journey to the Pacific shore.”
After a shorter-than-planned journey that included more than one encounter with knife-wielding bandits, the group of Mormons arrived at a town west of the Rio Grande called Socono. There they encountered other members of their sect who had left a year before with the prophet. The sect had stopped in New Mexico and built an arbor in Socono to prosecute Bruster on charges of false prophecy and being an imposter.
Bruster was expelled from the group, which left the Mormons in a state of chaos. Many wanted to stay where they were, a few others wanted to continue to California.
Potter decided to winter where he was and try his hand at prospecting in New Mexico. He and a group of 26 men, along with the Mormons who wanted to stay put, decided to try their luck prospecting near copper mines of Santa Rita. He spent five weeks mining for gold. He did find a little bit of gold, but it wasn’t enough to justify staying in a hostile area where both Apache and bandit attacks were a common occurrence.
BACK TO TEXAS
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| Andrew Jackson Potter |
Potter left the mines and wintered on the New Mexico side of the Rio Grande. In the spring, exhausted from six years of camp life in the desert southwest, he decided try his luck in San Antonio.
According to Potter, he was “a moral wreck” upon his arrival in San Antonio and was not fit for civilized society. He could read a little but could not write his name and — having known very little of life but sporting, fighting, gambling, drinking and having heard nothing but the rough language of soldier circles — he soon noticed the wide divide between himself and “intelligent society.”
He worked in San Antonio as a freighter but never felt at home in the city. A year later, in 1852, Potter left San Antonio and decided to visit a brother who lived near York’s Creek in Hays County.
He made a good living in Hays County, hauling lumber from Bastrop to San Marcos. One night, he attended a church meeting where a visiting Methodist minister was going to speak. The words of that pastor’s message, titled “Who is the Wise Man?” resonated deeply with Potter and opened the door of religion to him.
As he continued to freight lumber to Bastrop, he would ponder the sermon’s message and vowed to hear that preacher whenever an opportunity was offered.
Through his business dealings in Bastrop, he made the acquaintance of Emily Guin and, after a short courtship, they were married on Aug. 25, 1853. The couple made their home in Bastrop.
Not long after settling in Bastrop, Potter heard that his favorite preacher would be visiting town, and he was eager to hear the man speak again. According to his biography, Potter even gave up going to his Sunday horse races to hear the man preach.
Before long, he was regularly attending church services, and it was at a tent revival in 1856 when Andrew Jackson Potter got the call to become a Methodist preacher.
Since his formal schooling had been brief, he had to study diligently in order to be licensed to preach by the Methodist Church.
THE ROAD TO KERR COUNTY
Meanwhile, in Kerr County, Henrietta Rees had moved to Kerr County with her three sons and a daughter. After her home of hewn logs was completed in Center Point, sometime in 1852, she set about to address an issue in the community that was bothering her. She could not abide living in a community where the gospel wasn’t preached.
Rees contacted the Methodist Church in San Antonio for assistance and soon circuit riders — pastors who visited and preached in communities without a church — were coming to Kerr County to hold services in homes or beneath the cypress trees along the Guadalupe River. A temporary shelter, referred to as a “brush arbor” was soon constructed on the banks of Cherry Creek between Kerrville and Center Point to hold services.
Potter was one of the ministers to serve Kerr County. He ministered to the people here from 1867-70, again from 1876-1877, and he was presiding elder from 1879-82. He lived briefly in Kerrville in 1867, but eventually settled in Boerne. Potter felt that Boerne was a better home base for a circuit rider, and he and Emily lived there from 1868-83. Most of their 15 children were born in Boerne.
By the time the Potter was serving Kerrville, he had earned a reputation as an expert cattle driver who led several drives from 1858-61 and served as a chaplain in the Confederacy during the Civil War from 1862-65.
In 1866, he had finally been appointed as a pastor by the West Texas Conference of the Methodist Church and was assigned to the Prairie Lea circuit as a frontier pastor.
Potter was known to preach with great enthusiasm and had a reputation for his appeal to the “rougher elements” in his congregation. His son, T.W. Potter, once told an interviewer that he earned his nickname — “Fighting Parson” — because “he stayed when other preachers had been scared away.”
Potter sometimes conducted services with his Bible in one hand and his pistol in the other. Services in other communities where he traveled were often held in saloons, which were the only public buildings large enough where a congregation could meet. Sometimes an unruly group of men would interrupt the services in search of a drink.
It was said that Potter could turn any brawl into a gospel meeting — he was a man absolutely without fear, but was never the aggressor.
As the Hill Country became more civilized, Potter felt the call to take the gospel to the people of West Texas. In 1880, he established a circuit at Fort Concho and preached the first sermon in the First United Methodist Church at San Angelo. In 1883, he and Emily moved to San Angelo, another community that recognizes him as an early spiritual leader of their community. Both Boerne and San Angelo have historical markers dedicated to his work in their towns.
In 1894, Potter was sent to serve the Lockhart circuit. He died with his metaphorical boots on — in the pulpit while delivering a sermon at Tilman Chapel in Caldwell County on Oct. 21, 1895. He was buried in the Bunton Cemetery near Lockhart.
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