Thomas Potts (189)

Thomas Potts (29 May 1735–19 March 1785) was a merchant, ironmaster, and public officeholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, he joined the family trade of iron-making, opening a shop in Germantown with his uncle by 1757. Through marriage, Potts expanded his iron-making holdings to include other furnaces and forges before his father left him the family iron plantation of Pottsgrove. During this time Potts studied all aspects of iron operations, including metallurgy, while also cultivating a keen understanding of the commercial side of the business. His intellectual interests seem to have been served by his membership in the Union Library Company before its absorption into the Library Company of Philadelphia. Elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1775, he helped draft the state constitution in 1776. During the American Revolution, Potts drew on his experience to aid in a variety of infrastructural and defensive projects while also leading a battalion to march on New Jersey in the late summer of 1776. Following the war, Potts returned to the Assembly in 1784 and began investing heavily in a promising new form of energy: coal. Potts’s life, however, was cut short by a fatal gout episode, and he never lived to see his predictions of coal’s success realized. (PI)