Richard Potts (politician)

Richard Potts

Richard Potts (born July 19, 1753 in Upper Marlboro , Prince George's County , Maryland Province , †  November 26, 1808 in Frederick , Maryland ) was an American lawyer and politician who represented the state of Maryland in the US Senate . He had previously attended the Continental Congress as a delegate from Maryland .

Life

When Richard Potts was four years old, his parents moved him to Barbados . In 1761 the family returned to Maryland and settled in Annapolis , where the son later studied law. After he was admitted to the bar, he practiced in Frederick County from 1775 . After the outbreak of the revolution , Potts was a member of the Committee of Observation there in 1776 ; the following year he became military adviser to the governor of Maryland. During this time he also served as a clerk in the Frederick County Court of Justice, which he remained until 1778. In 1784 he became a prosecutor for Frederick, Montgomery and Washington Counties .

Potts held his first political mandate from 1779 to 1780, when he sat in the Maryland House of Representatives ; from 1787 to 1788 he belonged to this parliamentary chamber again. In 1781 he attended the sessions of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia . He rejected the election to the Maryland Senate in 1787. The following year he was a member of the State Convention that ratified the United States Constitution for Maryland . US President George Washington appointed Potts as Maryland's first federal attorney in 1789 ; he held this position until 1791. Then he became Chief Justice in the fifth district of his state and remained so until 1793. In the presidential election of 1792 he took part as a member of the Electoral College . At that time he belonged to the pro-administration faction , which later became the Federalist Party .

As a federalist, Potts was elected to the United States Senate, where he succeeded Charles Carroll, who had resigned, on January 10, 1793 . He remained in Congress until his own resignation on October 24, 1796 . He then took over the post of Chief Judge in the fifth district of Maryland until 1801 , before he was appointed associate judge at the Supreme Court of the state, the Maryland Court of Appeals . Richard Potts retired in 1804 and died on November 26, 1808 in Frederick. He was buried in All Saints' Parish Cemetery ; later a reburial took place in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore .

Web links

• Richard Potts in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Richard Potts in the database of Find a Grave (English)