Harriet A. Moore Page Potter Ames reminiscences

Harriet A. Moore Page Potter Ames was born on August 18, 1810, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Around 1835, she moved with her first husband, Solomon C. Page, to a farm in Austin Bayou, near Brazoria, Texas. Not long after, he abandoned her and their two young children to join the army. During the Runaway Scrape of 1836, Harriet met Robert Potter, secretary of the Texas Navy, who offered to arrange her journey to Kentucky but instead brought her to to his home in Shelby County. Potter claimed that Harriet's marriage to Page was invalid in Texas, and she married him by bond. They lived at Potter's Point on Ferry (Caddo) Lake in Red River County. Involved in the Regulator-Moderator War, Potter was murdered by a contingent of Regulators in 1842. In his will, Potter left the land of the homestead to Sophia Mayfield of Austin, and a portion of his possessions to Harriet, named Mrs. Harriet A. Page in the will.

That same year, Harriet remarried to Charles Ames and continued to reside on the Potter homestead. Upon Sophia Mayfield's death in 1852, the estate administrator sold the land. In 1857, the purchasers filed suit against Harriet and Charles Ames, and in 1872 Lewis v. Ames was tried in Marion County District Court. Although the case was resolved in Harriet's favor, the judgment was reversed and remanded by the Texas Supreme Court in 1875 because the Chief Justice found that Harriet was not Potter's legal wife. Dispossessed of her property at Potter's Point, Harriet returned to New Orleans with her children. She wrote a first-person narrative titled The History of Harriet A. Ames during the early days of Texas, Written by herself at the age of eighty-three. Harriet died in Covington, Louisiana, on March 18, 1902.