Benjamin "Ben" Harrison Potter
and Cora Belcher

Benjamin "Ben" Harrison Potter b 2 Nov 1886 KY Burdine, KY d 26 Apr 1983 (a year after he was featured in the article below) s/o Levy "Leif" Potter and Esther "Easter" Mullins. Benjamin "Ben" Harrison Potter m. 1906 to Cora Belcher b 1 Jan 1889 d 9 Feb 1961 Pike Co KY d/o Wilburn "Will" Belcher and Sarah Sowards. Children of Benjamin "Ben" Harrison Potter and Cora Belcher;

I. Prentice Potter

II. Sarah Jane Potter b 1907 m. (1) Male Rose; m. (2) 28 May 1966 to Samuel Tilden Elkins s/o Sam Elkins and Elizabeth Dotson.

III. Linchie Potter b 1910 m. Male Testerman.

IV. William Harrison Potter b 1913

V. Georgia Potter m. Male Elkins.

VI. Dessie Potter m. Male LeBorde.

VII. Dixie Potter b 1916 m. Male Willis.

VIII. Garfield Potter b 1918

IX. Johnie Potter Jr. b 1921 (a Methodist preacher).

X. Joan Potter m. Male Ray.

XI. Bobbie Potter b 1928 m. Male Maynard.

XII. Marvin Potter b 1935 (a Freewill Baptist preacher).

"I raised 11 children by trading and farming. And I still trade today." said 97 year old Ben Harrison Potter, his blue eyes twinkling and his voice strong with assurance rather than quavering and hesitant like the voices of so many elderly. "I trade knives and clothes, watches and things like that in my room at the nursing home in Elkhorn City. Sometimes as many as five people will visit me at a time. I sell watches to the nurses up there and they call me "Roller Dealer". Now what do you think of that?"

Ben stopped to chuckle. He reached for his chewing tobacco before reaching back to recall his trading career.

"I was working for the mines, dumping and loading coal for $2.25 a day. Had to go before daylight, come home after dark and eat supper by lamplight." he remembered. "It took every dime I got just to buy flour and sugar and staple food for the table. So I just went in one morning and told the boss I'd done quit the day before. I borrowed $50.00 and started trading. Before long, I was making more on selling one calf than I'd made working a whole day in mine work!"

Ben soon paid back the borrowed money and had enough money to buy more stock. His career had begun in buying and trading cattle, horses, mules, ponies, chickens and even dogs!

"Honey, you just name it! I traded everything you could think of. I dealt with horses, cows, calves and carried chickens over my shoulder across the mountains. I traded trucks and cars and liked to trade on knives. Reckon the most money I made in trading was selling ponies to the mines. I'd buy ponies in Ohio and Indiana and bring them back to the mines," Ben said.

"You must have been quite a hustler," I told him.

"I was a hustler and a real trader all right!" he answered. "Back then some men did farm work for 50 cents a day. Some of these and some in our family were jealous because I had
money in my pocket and they didn't. I could always buy in trading because I had cash to pay for what I bought. And I was honest and told the truth in my trading. People could trust me because I was as good as my word. Everybody in the country liked me. I was good to people and they were good to me."

Ben often went to Jenkins to buy fat cows to sell. Once he and Joe Hall bought 60 head of cattle and sheep and drove them down state just outside of Mt. Sterling. They were
gone two months and bought horses and cattle on the way back.

"I'd come back from trading trips at all times of the night," Ben said. "The first thing I did was to feed the cattle and horses. Sometimes I made trading trips down the river to Cattletsburg. Other good trading places where I went were Bristol, Tennessee and Abingdon and Christiansburg in Virginia, and towns in Ohio and Indiana. And I traded a lot at the Pikeville Stock Market run by Robert Walters over on the Williamson Road where the shopping center is today. Reckon I've sold thousands of horses and cows. I'd just like to see a green pasture big enough to hold all the stock I've traded in my lifetime!"

Back of Ben's career in hustling and trading lay forebears who journeyed as pioneers into the East Kentucky mountains to hew out a life in the wilderness. His Potter ancestors came into Kentucky from North Carolina. They settled at the head of Elkhorn, which is now Jenkins, Kentucky.

Ben's grandfather, Levi Potter, wasn't married when he came to Letcher County. He married a widow names Sally, who had three children by a previous marriage. Levi raised the three -- Ike, Rube and Winnie Cantrell - as his own. Levi and Sally's children were Ben, Lina, Lucy, Polly, Lizzie and Levi Jr., who was called Leif. Levi Jr. became the father of Ben Harrison Potter, named for his Uncle Ben.

Grandfather Levi cut timber to clear the wilderness..make a home site and clear fields for planting corn. He split rails to fence pasture land and rived boards to make paling fences around his garden and yard. In those early days families depended on wild animals for their meal. The pioneer, Levi Potter, roamed the woods in hunting.

"My grandfather liked to tell tales of the old days." Ben said. "He told me about his house that was separated by a chimney, the manner in which early homes were built. He
built a place on each side of the chimney to hide things. In the Civil War he hid his corn there and covered it with wood. One day some Rebel soldiers came riding through and
found his corn. They took all of it. They took the heavy blankets his wife had woven to cover their shoulders and their horses from the winter cold. They took everything they
could find."

Ben's father, Levi Potter Jr. or Leif, married Easter Mullins from Dickenson County, Virginia: They had 15 children. A set of triplets died as infants, as did other childhood from the croup and childhood diseases. The children who lived were George,
Delia, Rob, Sylvania, Garfield, John, Ira, Ben, Delphia and Bee.

"My father worked on the farm and had all us children to work, too. We had big fields and gardens, raised most of what we ate, kept milk cows and other stock." Ben related, "As a boy I played ball and other games. I just went to the third grade because my folks kept me home to work. My mother hoed in the cornfields and worked like a man. She was the best mother in the country, I tell you! I can still remember how she took me to the Old Regular Baptist meetings when I was just a little shaver wearing homemade pants and a shirt."

He related next the story of his father's sending him as a boy to Virginia with a wagon to get supplies for his store. "The drummer boys came to Virginia and left things that my father needed for the little store we kept. I'd haul the goods through Pound Gap, Elkhorn, and where Jenkins is now. There was just a house now and then along the way I drove the wagon." Ben told me.

He stopped to meditate and then began another story: "My daddy always bought a lot of yearlings in spring. He'd turn them loose on the high flats and gaps up in the doubles
of the Cumberland mountains. Every Sunday he sent me up there to count the yearlings and take them a bucket of salt. There were the prettiest, clearest springs of water up there
for them to drink their water from. I remember on Sundays, too, and on Saturday nights how the relatives would come in and bring their whole families and sometimes stay all night. Boy, I enjoyed that! We'd have big kettles of chicken and dumplings then."

As he recalled his family Ben said two of his brothers, George and Garfield, were killed in 1902. George was killed by law officers in Virginia in August 1902. Garfield was playing cards with some men in Virginia and stopped to get a rock to sit on. His gun hit a rock, went off, and killed him in July that year.

Garfield was in his early 20's, I'd say. The death of my brothers almost killed my mother." 97-year-old Ben spoke of his mother's love.

His brother Rob was killed by a mule in November 1910. His brother, Ira, the late husband of Aunt Kate Potter (who is still living at 99 and whose story is in Old-Fashioned Mountain Mothers), died April 8, 1963.

"They're all dead except me." said Ben with a matter-of-fact tone like the last leaf upon the tree. "And I ain't got a cousin living that I know of."

He said he wasn't exactly sure of his birth date. "They didn't keep good records back then. When I checked the census records there were two dates for my birth. One was September 5, 1885: another said November 2, 1885. I guess I'll take the last one. That would make me almost 97 if I ain't already." said blue-eyed Ben with the few white wisps of remaining hair on his head.

Ben was born at Burdine near Jenkins in Letcher County. His family moved and he grew up at Shelby Gap. The girl whom he was to marry lived at Blaze Branch, four miles from Shelby Gap.

"I first saw Cora Belcher when she was a little girl standing in a chair while she washed the dishes. Right then I picked her for my wife. She was as pretty as a store doll." said the man who lacks three years being 100 years old as he looked back to a brown-haired, blue-eyed boy in love. "Cora had black hair and black eyes. We had a good life together and she was a big fool over me. She died in 1960. I put her picture in her
monument. And I've put mine in my monument, too. I've already got my tombstone bought and paid for -- I got it six or seven years ago." disclosed Ben as a man not slack in
business affairs. "The children won't have to see to it."

Ben was 20 and Cora 16 when he borrowed a dollar or a dollar and a half for a marriage license and they got married in February 1906 at Clintwood, Virginia. They had 12 children. One died young with the croup. Eleven lived to adulthood.

Sarah Jane Elkins, the oldest, died in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1975. William Harrison Potter died two years ago in Texas. Nine of the children are living today.

Johnny Potter is retired and lives in New York. A daughter, Linche Potter Townsley, lives at Springfield, Ohio. Georgia Potter Elkins and Dessie Potter Laborde live at Garden City, Michigan. Dixie Potter Willis lives in Seattle, Washington. Bobbie Potter Maynard makes her home in Florida. Garfield Potter Sr is retired from the mines. He and his brother, James Martin or Marvin, live at Dorton, Kentucky. Marvin drives a truck for the Adams Construction Company.

As the children grew up Cora stayed home, cared for them and ran the farm with their help while their father was away on trading trips. When Ben was home he worked on his
farm and managed the children in their work. "I loved my children and wanted to raise them right. I kept them under control." he said.

"We always kept two or three horses and that many cows. You could come to my house any tme and get something to eat." he continued. "Cora did a heap of cooking and she didn't
care for it. She cooked for all the cattlemen I brought in and for the big church association dinners. We'd bring folks home then to stay all night. Sometimes we had so much company that some had to sleep in the barn loft."

Once in his trading Ben traded off Cora's last good milk cow. She told a neighbor, "I'm not one bit worried. Ben will get me another good one." He did.

"You could get a good milk cow and calf back then for $30.00 or less." he said. "Once I bought a mule for $125. We called the mule Kate. I kept Kate 10 years and then sold her for 125 in greenbacks. Now that was good trading, wasn't it?" he asked, grinning like a boy. "The children were crazy over Kate but she got ring bone around her hoof. I learnt my children to handle mules and horses and how to work them."

As Draxie Wright, working in the Pikeville Methodist Hospital, came to check on Ben, the two recalled a blind mule that had belonged to Draxie's father, John L Anderson. They talked of the old days their families had shared together. "It would take a book to tell it all." both agreed.

"I recollect the first coal we ever burned. Before this people burned wood and had never heard of burning coal." Ben reflected "That's the reason people gave away their coal.
They didn't know its worth. I remember one time when the road was being surveyed up Shelby Gap and the men got out a seam of coal. My daddy cut the right-of-way and I
carried water for the work hands. They paid me 50 to 75 cents a day. One man killed a copperhead and took 11 little snakes out of it that the copperhead had swallowed. The
men told me that snakes swallow their young to protect them."

Ben said he'd seen many changes in his long life, many new ways of doing things since electricity and cars had come along. "I remember my mother's old spinning wheel and how
I'd hold the yarn on my arms for her to roll. She'd knit stockings on four needles by candles or oil lamps. I remember my daddy's old-time coffee mill grinder. Times have turned clear around from what they used to be."

He said times were dangerous back in early days. People would waylay and kill one another. His father told him that in his day a body could take $50 and get anybody killed he wanted to. There were some wild ones among neighbors and in his family."

"But I never had no trouble with anybody and never got in jail." Ben said "I had something else to do besides getting into trouble."

He didn't deny that he'd had some bad habits in his lifetime but he had some bad habits in his lifetime but he gave them up long ago, he said. He has followed the Regular Baptist faith for many years and likes to hear good old-fashioned preaching. He recalled a number of old-time Baptist preachers -- Frank, Tom and John Hopkins, J. C. Swindall, George Powell, Sherd Osborne, John M. Justice and Tom, Milton and John Wallace Thacker.

Ben's son, Marvin Potter, is a Freewill Baptist preacher and preaches every fourth Sunday at the Elkhorn City nursing home. Ben's grandson, Garfield Potter Jr is a Methodist preacher. Ruby Potter, Ben's daughter-in-law, says that Ben has 43 grandchildren and so many grandchildren in further generations that no one has yet counted them.

"I'm proud of Marvin and Garfield. We're all brothers and sisters in faith if we're right with the Lord. I learned to read the Bible after Cora and I got married. It seems like I'm just gifted to read the Bible. The words just come to me somehow." Ben pondered slowly.

When Ben Potter lay in the hospital last week he was in the room with David Yates. David's wife, Nettie Helen Yates, and Ben shared several conversations talking about the Bible. She said it was just like being in church to talk with Ben. It was she who suggested that I write his story and she helped record notes on his life.

"What's made you live such a long life?" I asked.

Ben's eyes lighted once more "You know, I've wondered about that, too, and have studied everything. I only know it's been through the good Lord. I've had good health, for one thing. The first thing that hit me was a kidney stone about 25 years ago. The next thing was diabetes about eight or ten years ago. Dr. Ira Potter, my brother, Ira's grandson at Lackey, has doctored me some. And I've had other good doctors."

After Ben's second wife, Alpha Rowe Potter, died in March 1981, he went to Mountain View Health Care Center in Elkhorn City. He has returned there now. More than likely, Ben Harrison Potter, age 97 (or almost) is trading knives or watches again from his room in the nursing home.

"It's something to do and I'm a real trader all right!" he said.

Just before Nettie and I left him in the hospital that day, she looked at her watch and said it must be losing time.

Ben's eyes came alert suddenly. In an energetic manner he raised his head from the pillow. He looked directly at her watch, examining it carefully.

"You'd better trade that watch off and get another." he said.