William Chapman Potter

William Chapman Potter (October 16, 1874 - January 2, 1957) was an American industrialist and banker.

Early life Potter was born on October 16, 1874 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Edwin Augustus Potter (1842–1936), and Harriet Ann ( Berry) Potter (1848–1937), who were both from Sagadahoc County, Maine. Among his siblings were Edwin Augustus Potter Jr. (who married Cora Prindeville), and Gertrude Potter (wife of William Roland Cox Jr. and William Stuart Forbes).

His paternal grandparents were William Potter and Pamelia G. Potter. His maternal grandparents were Alfred L. Berry and Mary L. ( White) Berry. Through his brother Edwin, who was a vice president at Guaranty Trust, he was a uncle of Sheila Potter,

Potter was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he trained as a mining engineer before graduating in 1897. and continued as a director until January 1967 when he became director emeritus. During his long tenure he steered Guaranty Trust through the aftermath of the World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, all the way through World War II. and president of the New York Clearing House from 1944 to 1945. Throughout his career, he served as a director of the Anaconda Company, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, Electric Bond and Share Company, Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation, and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. He served as board chairman of the Kennecott Copper Corporation, and was a vice president of the Braden Copper Company. In 1914, they rented 177 East 71st Street from Douglas L. Elliman. In 1917, they purchased 6 East 77th Street from Edmund Coffin (which he acquired from Charles Henry Marshall's widow). Before they divorced in Paris in October 1922, they were the parents of:

Jean Morton Potter (1903–1957), who married architect and painter Frederic August Soldwedel in 1924. They divorced and she married Edmund Coffin Stout Jr. in 1934. He died in 1943 and she married Horace Ransom Bigelow Allen, who had previously been engaged to Edith Ewing Bouvier and married to Kiki Preston, in 1947. He remarried before his death in 1961. Charlotte Morton Potter (1905–1972), who married golfer Reginald M. Lewis in 1926. They divorced in 1930, and she married stockbroker Roy Franklin Atwood, a son of Herbert Franklin Atwood, in 1934. They divorced and she married Robert Jennings. They divorced and she married Thomas Wynward Sabine Pasley, a son of Thomas Hamilton Sabine Pasley (a grandson of Sir Thomas Sabine Pasley, 2nd Baronet), in 1957. Pauline Morton Potter (1917–1917), who died in infancy.

After their divorce, Caroline married Harry F. Guggenheim in February 1923. After the wedding, his father gave them 90 acres in Long Island where they had architects Frederick J. Sterner along with Polhemus & Coffin build Falaise "in the style of a 13th-century Norman manor house". She sold 6 East 77th Street to George Arents in 1925. They had a daughter, Diane Guggenheim. After being separate for two years, they divorced in July 1939, and she married Williams before her death in 1952.

Second marriage Potter remarried, on March 10, 1923, to Rose Lee Saltonstall (1892–1946), a daughter of Philip Leverett Saltonstall (a son of Leverett Saltonstall II) and Frances Anne Fitch ( Sherwood) Saltonstall (a daughter of Thomas Dubois Sherwood). After Rose's father died in 1919, her mother remarried to Dr. Joel E. Goldthwait in 1936. Rose's brother, Philip Leverett Saltonstall Jr., married actress Maxine Jennings, and her sister, Katherine Leverett Saltonstall, married Philip B. Weld. Another sister, Frances Sherwood Saltonstall, married George von Lengerke Meyer Jr. (son of George von Lengerke Meyer) and Dr. Eugene Hillhouse Pool.

In addition to his New York City residence, Potter had a residences on the North Shore of Long Island, and a plantation in Georgia known as "Blue Springs Plantation". Potter first assembled the plantation in the 1920s before he commissioned Hentz, Adler & Shutze of Atlanta to design the main house in 1930. After his death, Edward Vason Jones of Albany was hired to add Classical Revival dependencies.

His wife died at 66 East 79th Street, their 16-room duplex apartment in Manhattan, aged 54, on November 29, 1946. Potter died on January 2, 1957 at his plantation in Albany, Georgia. He was buried at Locust Valley Cemetery in Locust Valley, New York.

Descendants Through his daughter Jean, he was a grandfather of Pamela Soldwedel (1926–2015), who married Carlton T. Clark Jr. in 1948. She later married banker Richard D. Barrett.