JL Patterson, farmer

My great great great grandfather, John Lyon Patterson, wife of Ellie Stoneroad, lived on a farm in Pleasant View, Pennsylvania. His stone farmhouse stands today, along present-day Route 75 in Spruce Hill Township, Juniata County, not far at all from where I grew up. My family, or at least many parts of it, hasn’t moved far in well over a century.

Grace Patterson Henry, JL’s daughter and my great great grandmother, assembled and saved many items and papers from both her mother’s and father’s families, and she’s the reason I have this amazing collection today. Among the items saved are those pointing to JL’s farming background. I found one of these items on a shelf in my grandfather’s house: a small, hardbound book titled Manual of Subordinated Granges of the Patrons of Husbandry, Adopted and Issued by The National Grange. This little book was printed by J.A. Wagenseller, Printer, in Philadelphia, in 1883, and it bears the embossed seal of the Spruce Hill Grange. Slipped in this book’s front cover is a small booklet titled Private Instructions to Officers and Members of the Patrons of Husbandry in Degree Work and Paraphernalia, Adopted and Issued by the National Grange. This little booklet was printed in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1889.

Meetings of the grange of 1883 followed a rigid format, dictated by the booklet:

Ritual
Opening the Grange
M [Calls to order.] The hour of labor has arrived, and the work of another day demands our attention. Let each repair of his or her allotted station. Worthy Overseer, all are present correct?
O. Worthy Steward, you will ascertain.
S. [Replies to O.] My assistants will make examination and report.

And it continues, with song and music and an opening ode and conferring of degrees. How incredibly tedious.

JL Patterson was a member of the Spruce Hill Grange, and a stock certificate issued December 28, 1895, notes that he was the holder of two shares in the grange, valued at $5 each. Adjusted for inflation, those shares would each cost $137.85 today.

Earlier in 1895, JL Patterson received in the mail an award from the World’s Columbian Commission for his entry of wheat in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  The Columbian Exposition was a world’s fair, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s happening upon the Americas. 65,422 exhibitors showed their wares in many categories, agricultural and otherwise. For his entry of wheat, JL found himself among the 21,000 individual winners (or 36 percent of the total) who won a total of 23,757 awards. As noted on the certificate, JL’s wheat won “for good weight and general appearance of the exhibit; true to variety.”

The certificate proclaiming the superiority of JL Patterson’s wheat is large–24.5×19 inches–and features an etching of Christopher Columbus. (See here for more information on the Columbian Exposition diplomas.) Winning exhibitors also received a bronze metal. While JL’s bronze medal is likely long gone, his certificate still exists, framed and now sitting in my house. My mother had stored it away in a closet for more than twenty years, holding it after her grandmother (my great grandmother, Margaret Adam Henry, mother of John P. Henry, or the Jack in “Jack’s Papers”) gave it to her. It had been in her house in East Waterford for years before that, most likely in the collection of the house’s other resident, John J. Patterson, husband of Beulah Pannebaker Patterson and son of JL.

Strangely enough, a book listing all winning exhibitors from the Columbian Exposition does not list JL’s name. But a catalog of all exhibitors from Pennsylvania does list JL, calling him “Katterson” instead of Patterson. Fortunately, the certificate was correct.