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Beautiful horses
I don’t know much about this–the year, the occasion, the church–but this lovely photo is of my great great grandmother, Grace Patterson Henry, her husband Harvey Henry, and her mother, Ellie Stoneroad Patterson.
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The Pattersons of Pleasant View
This undated photo, found in a trunk of old photos along with its gilded frame (in quite good shape!) depicts the Pattersons in front of their farmhouse in Pleasant View (Spruce Hill Township), Pennsylvania. From the left, we have young John J. Patterson, his brother Thomas Patterson, Grace Patterson (my g-g-grandmother), John L. Patterson (my g-g-g-grandfather), and Ellie Stoneroad Patterson (my g-g-g-grandmother). John J. was born in 1879 and looks no older than ten years old, and Thomas died in 1890 at the age of 13, leading me to place this photo at around 1889. The house still stands today along Route 75.
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Ellie’s grave
Ellie Stoneroad Patterson, my third-great grandmother, left this earth on July 16, 1909. She was buried among so many other Pattersons in the Lower Tuscarora Presbyterian Cemetery in Academia, Pennsylvania. Her memorial card was manufactured by H.F. Wendell & Co. of Leipsic, Ohio, “manufacturers of extra fine memorial cards.” The card is style number 2. (I don’t know why the death dates are a week apart from the card to the stone.)
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Ellie’s perfect
Ellie Stoneroad was perfect–at least, according to a quarterly report from the Harrisburg Female Seminary. According to her principal, S.E. Dixon, Ellie attained perfect “4” scores in all subjects–ancient geography, composition, algebra, zoology, evidences of Christianity, Butler’s analogy, music, and family departments. She was perfectly punctual and perfectly behaved, as well.
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A catalogue for Ellie’s alma mater
Dear Ellie Stoneroad, packrat that she seems to have been, saved three catalogues from her alma mater, the short-lived Harrisburg Female Seminary. The seminary, which lasted from 1849 to 1867, was located at the junction of Locust Street and present-day Court Street in Harrisburg–coincidentally at the very spot of the parking garage serving the office building where I interned one summer in college. (I did not realize this at the time, however.) Despite its short life, the seminary seems to have attracted substantial backing during its time. Its catalogue lists recommendations from many, including William F. Johnson, the former governor of Pennsylvania. Names of its backers read like a who’s…
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Schoolgirl Scribblings
Tucked away for a century or more between pages 142 and 143 of D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation (Vol. II) was a pristine sheet, embossed, written upon in pencil and pen by Ellie Stoneroad. It survives from Ellie’s schoolgirl days at the Harrisburg Female Seminary. It’s faint, not very easy to read, but brings a smile nonetheless for the sheer normalcy of the things written upon it. Ellie wrote multiple times on it the months and days of the week and their meanings (“July -Julius Ceasar,” “Monday-Moon’s Day,” “Friday-Frea’s Day”), an abortive French verb conjugation (“voyais, voyons”), and her last name and city (Stoneroad, Harrisburg). There appears (twice) the instruction “Write…
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Ellie’s getting married
My three-greats grandmother, Ellie Stoneroad Patterson, seems to have come from a family of some means. She went to a private school in Harrisburg and spent her twenties unmarried–this was in the mid-1800s–and lived with her mother, traveling a bit, including to Iowa to visit her sister. She married John Lyon Patterson in March 1872, at the age of thirty, and moved from Mifflin County to Juniata County, leaving behind her community, her congregation, and the Sunday School class she taught. This letter, written to Ellie from her Lewistown friend E.K. Gibson in March 1872, was evidently sent after Ellie had moved away to join her new husband J.L. Patterson in Pleasant…
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Grave stone, paid in full
My four-greats grandmother, Margaret Sigler Stoneroad (last written about as the subject of an acrostic urging her to remain chaste), died on May 29, 1876, with burial in her home in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. On August 8, 1876, her son-in-law, John Lyon Patterson (husband of Ellie Stoneroad Patterson) paid $38 for a set of gravestones for Margaret’s grave to Charles Stratford Jr. Stratford owned and operated Mount Union Marble Works and Lewistown Marble Works, a business he carried on from his father, Charles Stratford Sr., a marble cutter born in 1812 in Cheltenham, England.
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The eldest son
I’ve mentioned before that seemingly random scraps of paper are stuffed into books that have come into the possession of both me and my cousin. These books, mostly from my great great great grandmother, Ellie Stoneroad Patterson, seemed to be repositories of various clippings of value to the family–announcements, recipes, religious tracts, and other items of note. Case in point: this announcement, clipped from the Port Royal Times of January 23, 1890, noting the passing of 13-year-old Thomas Patterson, eldest son of Ellie and her husband, John Lyon Patterson. As though realizing her great great great grandson would stumble upon this 125 years later, Ellie–or maybe her daughter, Grace Patterson Henry, who…
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Will McDowell, RIP
Juniata County’s one and only museum is the Tuscarora Academy, the lone surviving building of a boarding school in the tiny village of Academia. Nearby the Tuscarora Academy was the Tuscarora Female Seminary, a boarding school for girls owned by my four-greats grandfather, Alexander Patterson. In an envelope addressed to G.P. Henry (Grace Patterson, my great great grandmother) were, as the label read, “old papers”– the will of Margaret Sigler, Ellie Stoneroad’s mother and Grace’s grandmother, and this handwritten tribute to William McDowell, a Tuscarora Academy student who died on September 20, 1845. The poem was written by Henry Wolf, “for the use of John Patterson.” There were plenty of John…