Good Luck: the stranded brig and Potter’s waiting chapel

The account Murray left

Murray’s Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray (1816), chapter V is the central source. He says he left England on the Hand in Hand hoping to live quietly in America. The brig entered a New Jersey inlet, and he went ashore for food. Potter gave him fish and explained that he had built a meetinghouse open to preachers of different faiths. Potter thought the vessel’s arrival fulfilled a long expectation of a minister who shared his belief in universal salvation.

Murray initially refused to preach. As he recalled, “the wind changed not,” leaving the vessel nearby through Saturday. Potter sent riders to tell neighbors, and Murray spoke at the meetinghouse on Sunday. Murray describes a plain room without ordinary pews, except a large square pew before the pulpit. He says the wind became favorable after the service and the boatmen came to take him back to the brig. These intimate scenes are Murray’s retrospective testimony, not a surviving 1770 log or independent account of Potter’s words.

Where the story meets the landscape

The 1991 Historic American Buildings Survey history of Lanoka Harbor and Murray Grove places the Potter meetinghouse near U.S. 9 on the south bank of Cedar Creek. It identifies Good Luck as an earlier name for this area and describes the memorial stone and cemetery. The current Murray Grove account says the present chapel stands on the historic meetinghouse site, while the original building was taken down. Its present structure and the 1770 room should not be treated as identical without building-level documentation. The Library of Congress also holds 18 Historic American Buildings Survey photographs of the Thomas Potter House on Murray Grove Road. That house is a separate historic building from the meetinghouse, and its present condition has not been established here.

The story is often called the start of American Universalism. The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography cautions that universalist belief existed in America before 1770, including among people connected to Potter. The sermon matters as a remembered founding moment in a longer history, not proof that the belief first appeared that day.

Use the map

The marker centers on the documented Good Luck Cemetery locality, close to Murray Grove. It is an orientation point, not the brig’s grounding place, Potter’s doorstep, or a guarantee of visitor access. The inlet and shore have changed, and Murray gave no coordinates for the vessel. Check Murray Grove’s current visiting information before entering its grounds, and respect cemetery and property rules.