Ancestors

George Patterson

Born about March 1812, by the age to the month on his gravestone at Oakwood. Where he was born is a harder question than it looks. The censuses of 1850 and 1860 both say Ireland, and so does his son William's death certificate of 1909, filled in completely by a daughter living in the same house. Not one document names an Irish county. And one document does not say Ireland at all: his son James's certificate of 1933 gives the father's birthplace as Scotland and the mother's as Ireland, on consecutive lines in the same hand.

He and Mary arrived by about 1835, a decade before the Famine, which puts them in the smaller and earlier Irish stream rather than the flood. They farmed at Tallmadge in Summit County and raised at least nine children, all of them born in Ohio.

He was not a landless man. The will he made on 5 September 1861 devises to his wife the farm on which they lived, thirty acres in Lot 4 of Tract 9 in Tallmadge, and says plainly that it was all the real estate he owned. She was to hold it for life, selling enough to clear his debts, and it was to pass afterwards to their son William. If William died first the land was to be sold and divided among the three youngest, James, Margaret and Ella, and if he outlived his mother he was asked to provide for them as far as he could. George signed his own name to it, in a firm hand, and three neighbours witnessed it.

He died seven days later, on 12 September 1861, two months before his son George shipped out as a Marine. The will was not proved until March 1864.

If George Patterson is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "George Patterson (1812-1861)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-patterson-1812-1861-e638b9.