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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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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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Adams Express Company
The pile of old papers handed down from generation to generation and now finding itself in my hands has quite a few folded scraps of yellowed paper–letters, clippings, recipes, and so forth–whose context and relevance I don’t know. They’re interesting in the own right, as artifacts from two centuries ago, and their endurance is fascinating. How have these old letters and receipts managed to survive for so long? And, more importantly, why have they survived for so long? I toss my own papers every day. If I should stuff a few of them into a vault for 150 years, will future generations be fascinated by them? Will they be imbued with importance…