William Pote

William Pote appears in the diary of President John Quincy Adams several times during the summer and fall of 1826, usually in the context of traveling. For example, on July 9, 1826, when Adams left Washington to travel to Quincy, Massachusetts, he wrote: “My Servant William Pote was sent with our trunks of heavy baggage in the Stage.”¹ In one entry, Adams identified Pote as “my man servant” which usually referred to a valet, or personal attendant.² In other entries, Adams referred to Pote simply as a “servant.”³ It is unknown when Pote began working at the White House. However, in 1825, President Adams mentioned in his diary “William the groom,” but it is unclear if this is the same man as William Pote.⁴ 

It is also unclear exactly when he ended his work at the White House, but he left before Adams’s term as president ended and opened up a grocer’s shop in Washington, D.C. On March 14, 1829, Adams wrote in his diary: “William Pote, who formerly lived as a Servant in my family, and now keeps a small grocer’s shop came to ask of me a loan of a thousand Dollars, to enable him to take a lease for sixteen years of the house where he keeps his shop.”⁵ Adams loaned him the money, which Pote paid back three years later.⁶ Local newspaper advertisements suggest Pote also owned a lumber business in the capital for two years until he closed it in 1832.⁷ Nothing else is known about Pote at this point.