Miss Jean Potter and Miss Charlotte Potter

Beach at Southampton.

Jun 26, 2022

The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s. Available online are 39,744 glass negatives and a selection of about 1,600 photographic prints for which copy negatives exist. This represents all of the glass plate negatives the Library holds and a small proportion of the 50,000 photographic prints in the collection. The Library purchased the collection in 1948 from D.J. Culver. (Bain also deposited photographs for copyright during his career; photographs clearly acquired by the Library of Congress through copyright deposit are generally considered outside the scope of the George Grantham Bain Collection.) — 1913 © Bain News Service - Library of Congress Washington LC- 19461

2015 © Marie-Lou Chatel Restored & Colorized

There's a mention of "Miss Jean Potter and Miss Charlotte Potter" being "on the beach" at Southampton in summer 1922 (apparently visiting for the festivities surrounding a tennis tournament)

"Jean and Charlotte Potter" took part in a 1922 circus-themed fair at Agawam Park, to benefit Southampton Hospital (they helped run the roasted peanuts and popcorn concession).
The two Potter girls are also listed among the young women selling programs for a performance at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton that year (New York Tribune, 3 September 1922).

I think they're the daughters of banker William Chapman Potter and Caroline Morton Potter, who were divorcing in 1922 (which might account for the girls' busy social calendar that year). Reports about the divorce mention they have two daughters, 17 and 19. Mrs. Potter was residing in Paris at the time.
They had a half-sister, Diana Guggenheim (1924-1991), aka Diane Hamilton

Jean Potter married artist Frederick Soldwedel; they divorced in 1930. Then she married Lt. Edmund C. Stout; she was widowed in 1943 when he died from an accidental gunshot wound in their home in Florida.

Charlotte Potter married Reginald M. Lewis in 1926, and divorced him in 1930; then she married a man named Atwood, as his second wife, c1932.

As well as the 1922 mention of the girls being "on the beach" in Southampton, they were at Southampton in 1913
It seems likely that this group of photos on a beach are all from Southampton, since Frances Breese lived here and Goodhue Livingston also had a house there.

Thanks Pennylrichardsca and Swanq on Flickr.com for these information about the lives of these lovely young women.

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