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Early Reno County (KS) Settler

July 11, 2018 by Jim Potter 4 Comments

 

https://jimpotterauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Reno-County-Kansas.m4a

·  James Chamellis Potter (1865-1955)  ·

J. C. Potter won the 1916 Democratic primary for County Commissioner, Second District. However, in a close three-way race, Republican H. J. Astle won the seat.

My great-grandfather, James Chamellis Potter, participated in the Cherokee Outlet land run, was a blacksmith and marshal in Nickerson, and suffered a debilitating stroke years before his death.

“Mellis” or “J.C.” was born prior to the end of the Civil War—just barely. As a little kid, five years old, I recall meeting him. A year later, in 1955, he died at age 90.

It’s mind-boggling for me to grasp that I knew someone, anyone, who was alive during the Civil War era! Think about that, over 150 years ago!

James Chamellis & Eva (Dix) Potter homestead near Jet, Oklahoma – 1900. L to R: Eva (mother), Charles, J.C. (father), Clarence, Edna, Edith.
Adam (1826-1916) & Rosannah (Layman) Potter (1836-1926), parents of James Chamellis. Both buried in Sego Cemetery, Reno County.

Mellis was born February 6, 1865 near Tiffin, Johnson County, Iowa. He spent the first thirteen years of his life on the Iowa farm where he was born. 

In 1877 the Potters preempted in Loda Township, Reno County. The following year J.C.’s parents, Adam and Rosannah (Layman) brought their family to work the land. Mellis attended school in a little sod schoolhouse in the neighborhood in which dried corn stalks were used as fuel.

James Chamellis and Eva Belle Dix were married in 1889. Her family had located to Reno County in 1878 and settled on a farm near Haven. They moved to Valley Township in 1884, then to a farm near Lerado in 1888.

Potter Brothers – L to R: C. Willard, J. Chamellis, Elmer, and Jacob “Jake” in Morton County, KS about 1922 while visiting Clarence L. Potter family.

On September 16, 1893, land was opened in the Cherokee Outlet of northern Oklahoma Territory. Mellis and his brother Elmer joined the rush to claim land. They selected sites in Woods County, now Alfalfa County. Mellis dismantled his home in Reno County, transported the material by wagon to Oklahoma and erected the new house.

In 1902 the Potters traded the proven Oklahoma farm for 160 acres in Salt Creek Township, Reno County (NW 1/4, Sec 16, Twp 23, R7W).

Potters L to R: James Chamellis, Eva Belle Dix, Harold Lester, Cleo Candace Crandall, Clarence Lester – April, 1943.

Mellis was active in his community. He was a Democrat and an elder in the Christian Church of Nickerson. After retiring from farming in 1918, he was a blacksmith, marshal, councilman, and mayor (1937-1939) of Nickerson.

Read a 1939 newspaper article from the town’s official paper, the Nickerson Argosy:   mayorpotterissuesstatement

J.C. was an earnest advocate for prohibition and for years was a prominent member of the Anti-Horse Thief Association.

James and Eva had five children: Edna Alice, Edith Elsie, Clarence Lester, Charles Clifford, and Rhea Irene. Clarence was my grandfather. He was born October 15, 1897, near Jet, Oklahoma Territory.

James Chamellis and Eva Belle (Dix) Potter about 1940

James Chamellis died March 5, 1955 in Nickerson. Eva, his wife, had preceded him in death, September 13, 1946, in Hutchinson. Both are buried in Memorial Park Cemetery near Hutchinson.

Until next time, happy writing and reading!

· History of Reno County, Kansas: Its People, Industries and Institutions (1917), by Sheridan Ploughe
· The Ancestors and Descendants of Adam Potter and Rosannah Layman (1983), by Harold L. Potter
· The Nickerson Argosy newspaper

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Filed Under: Blog posts Tagged With: Adam Potter, Anti-Horse Thief Association, Cherokee Outlet, Christian Church of Nickerson, Clarence Lester Potter, Eva Belle Dix, Harold Lester Potter, J. C. Potter, James Chamellis Potter, Loda Township, Mayor of Nickerson, Reno County Kansas, Rosannah Layman Potter, Salt Creek Township

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Comments

  1. Nancy Julien Kopp says

    July 11, 2018 at 10:19 am

    You’re fortunate to have found that amount of information on your great-grandfather. I know about my grandparents but very little about the great-grands. Bits and pieces, no dates as to when they did this or that.

    Reply
    • Jim Potter says

      July 11, 2018 at 2:03 pm

      Nancy, thanks for your comments. Yes, I’m fortunate to have a family history. It sure helps that JC lived to be age 90 and that my father enjoyed genealogy. Another plus was having some old photos. Jim

      Reply
  2. Miriam Iwashige says

    July 12, 2018 at 7:43 am

    I’ve made several personal connections to places mentioned in this post. My mother was born and raised in Johnson County, Iowa (near Kalona, in her case) where your great grandfather was born.

    I was born and raised in Salt Creek township in Reno County. Our son Shane and his family live now in section 28, which is still labeled H. Iwashige from when we lived there. My brother, Lowell Miller, lives with his family on section 21, where Hiromi and I lived for the first three years of our marriage, just around the corner south and west from where your grandfather lived at the intersection of Centennial Road and 4th street. (I found the section numbers in the plat and directory published by Farm and Home Publishers. We get it in the mail every year.)

    The level of detail in your post is a treasure for all who know you and are interested in maintaining a connection with you and your family.

    Reply
    • Jim Potter says

      July 12, 2018 at 8:38 am

      Miriam, thanks for your comments. It’s great to know of your family history. One early plat of Salt Creek shows the land owned by N. E. Miller. I wonder, Is this the Miller who traded properties with my great-grandfather when he moved back from the Oklahoma Territory in 1902? Stories are pieces of history. History is fascinating! Jim

      Reply

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What People Are Saying

Denise Low, author of Jackalope (Red Mountain Press)

Jim Potter is a cop, retired, but he brings deep understanding of this job to his novel Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery. This layered novel has literary dimensions as characters explore crisis situations. Congratulations to this fine writer for his debut novel.

Rebecca from Proud Police Wife

Taking Back the Bullet is an emotional, yet captivating novel. Jim Potter does a superb job of intertwining each character and putting their individual identities on display. All law enforcement storylines are a true reflection of Potter’s years as a police officer because they are realistic and relatable. This is a book I highly recommend.

Dennis Perrin, educator

Masterful storytelling, exquisite character development, so real as to HURT and HOPE, a real page turner. Begs for stage, screenwriters, and visual episodic development a.k.a. TV series . . . Thanks Jim Potter for telling it like it is AND providing us visions of how it could be. Well done!

Rebecca Schillaci

As a former law enforcement officer, I found the story very relatable as it details the life of a law enforcement officer and the struggles some face throughout their careers. . . Taking Back the Bullet is a journey of understanding, respect, and forgiveness . . .

Sheryl Remar

I enjoyed the different stories of this book because Tom, James, and Suanna, the three main characters, represent in their own way the different struggles with themselves and society’s idea of what is normal.

John & Cindy Morrill, 20 years Air Force retired, 17 years law enforcement

I enjoyed your book. When I am looking for a new read, I always read the first page, last page and choose a random page somewhere in the middle before I decide to buy it. You had me on all three pages. I also like reading a book where you can relate to the characters and the settings in which they live and work. It makes a story more realistic if you can say, I am familiar with the area; I know where that town is or I have traveled that street. It was easy to relate to the characters. In one way or another, I have met them all somewhere in my journeys.

Judy Hawk

. . . I was impressed with the Native American information as well as the depth of character development . . . .

Wynona Winn, PhD, retired school superintendent

Three main characters walk different paths but with the same destination – each coping with his or her self-discovery, self-identity, and self-realization. Much like their earlier counterparts – Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield – their journeys are often joyous, often tedious and often tragic.

Diana Dester

Good story line, building the characters along the way. Great job!

Deb Theis, LSCSW, clinical therapist/hypnotherapist

Jim Potter has done it again! After his book, Cop in the Classroom: Lessons I’ve Learned, Tales I’ve Told, Jim has written another great work. In Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, Jim Potter takes us on an insightful journey into the lives and relationships of numerous characters. Jim is such a talented storyteller that the reader quickly becomes immersed and has a ‘bonding experience’ with each of the characters, feeling their joy, fear, passion and pain. Jim’s novel speaks to the empowerment of persistence with the characters as they work through their trials. As a therapist, I appreciated the heartfelt struggles from each of the characters and their diversity. I also found value in the novel’s understanding of society’s misunderstanding of both mental health and other conditions in which people struggle. The novel contains rich exposure to various realities that many of us do not know about . . . but should. When I finished this captivating novel, I was wanting to read the sequel! It was an honor and a wonderful, mesmerizing experience reading this book. Congratulations, Jim!

Jane Holzrichter

I finished it last night around midnight. What a great piece of work. It kept me intrigued all the way to the end.

Sean McArdle, Winchester, England

Retired police officer Potter’s novel centres on very disparate characters and through the tried and tested means of gradually introducing each one, builds a sense of anticipation about what is going to happen to them. This often used methodology is not easy to do well but is superbly handled by Potter who knows how to give enough detail to bring the characters to life, yet not too much so as to slow down the pace of the developing story. A climactic event affects the main characters and it is at this point Potter’s deep knowledge of people and police procedures really hits home; page by page we read how a seemingly simple, though terrible occurrence, can have huge consequences. To Potter’s credit the story does not have a completely conclusive or simplistic ending. Instead it leaves the reader thinking about how the events of a single minute can affect lives forever. I would whole heartedly recommend this book not as a crime novel or even as a novel about crime but as a beautiful and positive affirmation about what it is to be human and how ultimately it is relationships which matter more than events.

Morgan Penner

Taking Back the Bullet is a novel that provides the reader with a window into the world of law enforcement. As the novel unfolds, the reader is able to see how split-second decisions alter the lives of the main characters in the story. Taking Back the Bullet also explores how humanity is impacted by mental illness. One of my favorite quotes from Taking Back the Bullet is “We’re all just a critical moment from being disabled or mentally ill, and we don’t want to think about it.” The novel also provides the reader an opportunity to gain a better understanding of how mental illness impacts the individuals, their family, friends, and society. Taking Back the Bullet is a story of forgiveness and overcoming life’s struggles and tragedies.

Steve Becker

I’m impressed. It was an excellent read. . . . I hope you continue with more projects in the future.

Larry Kruckman, anthropologist

Jim Potter displays ethnographic skills in Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, creating vivid scenes and fascinating characters. The Greeks had a word for subcultures and people’s behavior: ‘ethos,’ or ‘ways of being.’ In colorful, sometimes marvelous detail, this novel captures various people and settings . . . the ethos of rural Kansas: a jail, art fair, powwow, rehab center, courtroom, albinos, and even someone in the throes of postpartum depression. So detailed are the descriptions that they must be drawn from the author’s personal experience. Besides the artfully created characters such as the struggling jailer and husband Tom Jennings, local artist Jesse Thomas, and Native American Joe Morningcloud, there is a tight story line that grabs your attention and won’t let go. Human tensions, love, conflict, joys and sorrows are all there. Magically, all the many pieces come together in a final crescendo, giving hope that even when we find ourselves in big trouble we can survive. This is a novel I highly recommend!

Larry Kruckman
Anthropologist
Karleen Wilson-Moon

Terrific story relevant to today’s social issues . . . well written . . . likable characters . . . insightful perspective from an insider in law enforcement.

Karleen Wilson-Moon

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