Jennie O'Neill Potter

Jennie O'Neill Potter (1867–1900) was an American actor and dramatic reader. King Edward VII, then the Prince of Wales, called Potter "the queen of dialect readers".

Early life and education Jennie O'Neill (or O'Neil) was born in Patch Grove, Wisconsin, in 1867. Her father, Thomas, was an impecunious cadet of an Irish family, who took his English wife, Elizabeth, to settle in the State of Wisconsin, where Jennie was born and raised. she married Charles W. Potter. They had two children, Davie and May. Faced with financial difficulties which her husband could not overcome, he went to the gold fields of Montana to seek his fortunes, and there died.

Her biographer, Anna T. Randall Diehl, published The Story of Jennie O'Neil Potter in 1901.

Selected works "The Monologue as an Entertainment", The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893, with Portraits, Biographies and Addresses (1894) (text)

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