History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume II, Part 87

Author: Drury, Augustus Waldo, 1851-1935; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, pub
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1092

USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume II > Part 87

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county, Ohio. He married Sarah Van Gordon. The Doctor's father, Rev. G. L. Travis, was a Methodist Episcopal minister, connected with the Cincinnati con- ference and devoted his entire life to the work of the ministry, preaching in both Ohio and Kansas.

The Doctor's mother was a native of Butler county, Ohio, and a daughter of Jeremiah and Mary Ann (Vail) Marston. Her father, who served as judge of the county court, was a very heavy landowner and as a whig took a very active and prominent part in political affairs. His parents were Theodore and Johanna (Ladd) Marston. Theodore Marston was a soldier of the Revolutionary war. serving as a private in Colonel Stark's regiment and, being captured by the Brit- ish, he was held as a prisoner for some time. He enlisted four times during the struggle for independence. He was a son of Daniel and Sarah (Clough) Marston and his father lost his life serving as a captain in the English army during the French and Indian war, in 1757. The latter's parents were Simon and Hanna (Carr) Marston, who were residents of New Hampshire, where the family resided for several generations. Simon Marston, who was a farmer by occupation, died at the age of fifty-two years. He was the grandfather of Major General Henry Dearborn, commander of the American army in 1812. The parents of Simon Marston were Ephraim W. and Abigail (Sanborn) Marston, and his father was also a farmer and horticulturist, as well as one of the first brewers in New Hamp- shire. Ephraim W. Marston was a son of Thomas and Mary ( Eston) Marston, the former being one of the prominent citizens of his locality, taking a very active part in all town affairs. He was a son of William and Sabina ( Page) Marston, the latter being his second wife. He had one child by a former marriage. William Marston, the father of Thomas, was the founder of the family in the new world. He was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1592 and on coming to this country in 1634 located at Salem, Massachusetts, being one of the first Quakers to settle in this country. After residing in Salem for three years he removed to Newbury, Massachusetts, October 16, 1638, with fifty-five others, locating on the land in Win- necumet, Massachusetts, which had been granted them by the general court. They named the place Hampton and it is now included in Norfolk county, New Hamp- shire. William Marston died in 1672 at the age of eighty years. He was the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of our subject.

Dr. J. L. Travis was reared at home and attended different schools in the southern part of the state, receiving his preparation for college at Sunnyside Academy. He entered Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio, and after completing a five years' course there he entered Miami Medical College, at Cin- cinnati, from which institution he was graduated in 1890. He came immediately to Germantown, Ohio, where he at once entered upon the practice of his profes- sion. He has been a careful physician and has won the confidence of his fellow townspeople and has in consequence built up a large and remunerative practice.

On the 5th of November, 1890, Dr. Travis was united in marriage to Miss Jennie B. McCurdy, the daughter of Joseph and Mary (Routson) McCurdy. He is a member of several organizations, both fraternal and professional. He be- longs to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and is one of the Sons of the American Revolution. In the meetings of the Foresters, Juniors and Woodmen he takes a prominent part and is interested in all that concerns their welfare. For the past

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fifteen years he has been surgeon for the Miami Military Institution, in which ca- pacity he has given eminent satisfaction. In fact in all his work and relations as a man and as a physician Dr. Travis has secured a well deserved reputation for careful diagnosis, intelligent treatment and honorable dealings. He holds the respect of the community and the future promises much for him that will come as just compensation of his labors.

GEORGE ALBERT LYDENBERG.

George Albert Lydenberg, well known in musical as well as business- circles in Dayton, his native city, was born December 16, 1856. His father, John Lydenberg, was a native of Pennsylvania and was married in Harlem, New York, to Miss Catharine Adelia Schriver. Traveling westward by stage and canal, he arrived in Dayton in 1842. He had previously learned the carpenter's trade, which he now followed, soon taking up contract work on his own account. He then con- tinued in that field of labor until his death, which occurred February 2, 1893. He is a member of the Raper Methodist Episcopal church, served on its official board and took a very active and helpful part in its work. Unto him and his wife were born the following children: Mrs. Catharine Amelia Marst is now deceased. Her husband was in the army and was killed while carrying dispatches early in the war, in which he had enlisted soon after his marriage. Wesley Brax- ton Lydenberg married Marianna Miller and died in 1879, leaving two sons and a daughter. Harry is the assistant librarian of the New York city library. Walter lives in Kansas City. Miriam died in infancy. Caroline L. is the wife of William W. Hackney of Dayton, and they have one son, William W. Charles Floy and George Albert are both residents of Dayton. Alfred, the youngest, died in infancy.

Reared in the city of his nativity, George Albert Lydenberg pursued his edu- cation in the public schools to the age of fifteen years and then entered the Miam' Commercial College, from which he was graduated. At the same time he learned! telegraphy and, following his graduation, he entered the office of the Western Union Telegraph Company, of Dayton, as bookkeeper. He had filled the position for two years, when he found that close confinement in the office was detrimental to his health, and he resigned the position. He then learned the carpenter's trade and worked as a journeyman for a time, after which he began taking con tracts to build houses and so continued for eight or ten years. He then turned his attention to the real-estate business in handling property for others and also for himself. He has done some speculative building and his knowledge of realty values is comprehensive and exact. He has thoroughly informed himself con- cerning property on the market and has thus been enabled to make judicious in- vestments and profitable sales.

Mr. Lydenberg was married in Dayton in 1882 to Miss Jessie Fremont Christie, a daughter of William and Mary Christie, and they have become parents of five children : Miriam Alice, who is a teacher in the public schools of Dayton ; Wil- liam C., who married Jeannette Plummer and they have one child, Evelyn :

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Kathryn Mary, who is a nurse in the Tuberculosis Sanitariuni of Dayton ; Russell Forest and Helen Louise, both at home.

Politically Mr. Lydenberg is a republican but, while he believes firmly in the principles of the party, is not an active worker in its ranks. He belongs to St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal church and is well known in the musical circles of the city, having been one of the original members of the Philharmonic Society. He is deeply interested in preserving the classical and sacred music and in promoting a taste for that which is best in the art. His efforts have been of considerable influence in this direction and he counts among his friends many of those most prominently known in a musical way in Dayton.

THE PATTERSON FAMILY.

There stands at the junction of Main and Brown streets in Dayton, a little log cabin, which was the original home at Lexington, Kentucky, of the ancestors of the Pattersons, who are now residents of Dayton and stand as the most widely known of the representatives of industrial life in this city. The cabin was built by Colonel Robert Patterson, whom Governor Charles Anderson called "one of the earliest, bravest and best of the pioneers and. heroes who made the great west." In the large volume entitled "Concerning the Forefathers," by Mrs. Char- lotte Reeve Conover, there is an account given of the Scotch ancestry, which says :

"According to the 'Statistical Account of Scotland,' there are seven families of Pattersons now in Scotland whose armorial bearings show that they are related to one another. Five of these families spell the name with one 't'; one spells with two; and one with either one or two. Genealogists agree that whether with one 't' or two, they belonged together in the beginning of things. In the struggle for popular rights, the Pattersons, as a family, were always forward to take the people's side. Their cardinal principle was the maintenance of true religion, and that undefiled. Out of their ranks have stood many eminent characters in the affairs of both church and state. The motto of all of them has been 'Pro Rege et Grege'-'For the king and the people'; meaning, that with all reverence and respect for existing civic institutions, the Pattersons have always felt a sympathy for society in the mass ; an interest in people who had no armorial bearings, and who stood for themselves and asked no favors of. anyone. And in times when to be in the upper minority was of necessity to persecute the low majority, who knows but the Pattersons preferred healthy nonconformity to pampered acquies- cence and valued their own opinions above their ancestral estates? It was, doubt- less, this instinct, independent of progress, which drove them out of the old world into the new."

Members of the Patterson family departed from the Established church and with many other Presbyterians fled from Scotland to the north of Ireland. John Patterson, the probable ancestor of all the Pennsylvania Pattersons, went from his home in Scotland with his wife and two sons to Londonderry, Ireland, but they suffered cruelly from persecution there with King James II beseiged that

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ROBERT PATTERSON

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town with his English troops. The whole town was reduced almost to starvation. The family included Robert Patterson, who married and had ten children, six of whom early emigrated to America. John Patterson, the emigrant ancestor, either son or nephew of the above Robert, though an old man with grown and married children, was attracted by the tales concerning the opportunities of the new world and sailed from Ireland to Connecticut, landing near New London in the spring of 1728. Several of his children had preceded him, the first of the Pattersons in this country, having settled in the northwest part of the state. John Patterson and his son Robert decided to go farther south and according to the family records, it took them two years to cross the state. They settled on the way, raised a crop of corn and then moved farther west and south. They crossed the Hudson in the fall of 1730, proceeded south through New Jersey and before they reached their destination the father, John Patterson, died at the age of seventy-three. The next move of the family was into Pennsylvania and they spent several years in Bucks and Lancaster counties, in 1738 went to York county and afterward, returning to Lancaster, Robert Patterson purchased land on Sweet Arrow creek. His three sons, John, Francis and William, were enrolled for military services in the fort companies of York and Lancaster counties. Eight of these children of Robert and Margaret Patterson lived to maturity. The number included Francis Patterson, who married his first wife, Jane, when he left the Sweet Arrow farm in Lancaster county, and removed to Bedford county. Five children were born of this union, including Robert Patterson who was born in Bedford county, Pennsylvania, March 23, 1753. History gives clear and graphic pictures of conditions of life on the Pennsylvania frontier at that day and such were the experiences of Robert Patterson.

When he was twenty-one years of age, he joined a party of young men who went to Kentucky and spent a winter at Royal Spring, now Georgetown. In those days it was customary for a man to make a claim to a tract of land by plac- ing a number of trees in a circle around the property he desired and cutting his initials upon them. This was called a "hatchet claim." If he built a shelter of any kind he earned what was called "cabin rights," and if he cleared the land and planted corn, he then had "crop rights," which were considered equivalent to a warranty deed with all proper signatures. Early in November, 1775, he and a companion, James Sterritt, camped for a night on the north fork of Cane Run, on the site now included within the corporation limits of the city of Lexington, Kentucky. They built a cabin, ten or twelve feet square, and the initials "R. P." were carved on a tree together with the date, November 9, 1775. His daughter- in-law said: "For this and adjoining tracts and for lands purchased elsewhere for himself and others, he paid scrip and warrants granted to himself, my grand- father and others of the connection for services in Colonial, Revolutionary and Indian wars in a period of forty-seven years." In a few days, Robert Patterson returned to Royal Spring and in April, 1776, he again made his way to the Cane Run camp. It was upon the tract of land which he had previously visited that his friends, Perry and McConnell, in the spring of 1776, helped him build a cabin, which afterward became his home. It was in this cabin, according to the best authorities, that the city of Lexington was named after the battle that had just meant so much to Massachusetts and to the world. Following his first visit to

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the Lexington lands, Robert Patterson led an exciting and strenuous life, for the Indians were continually on the warpath and he helped to establish the claims of civilization on the frontier. At length, he was wounded in an encounter with the savages and returned to his home at Falling Springs, Pennsylvania, to recuper- ate. While there, he became engaged to Elizabeth Lindsay, whom he wedded four years later. While he was convalescent his younger brother, William, made his way to Kentucky and found the claim, the corn fields and the log cabin and the trees marked "R. P." Soon he was joined by his brother, Robert, who continued in the Indian campaigns, while William Patterson planted and guarded the crops. In the meantime, he laid out the city of Lexington and in 1787 became one of the founders of Cincinnati. The following year, he accompanied General George Rogers Clarke in the Illinois campaign and was commissioned second lieutenant. He was also given a grant of land of two hundred and sixteen acres, while orders came to him from Virginia to establish another fort for frontier protec- tion wherever he might see fit. Naturally the spot chosen by him was the place that had so charmed him on his first exploring trip into Kentucky and which with his brother William's help, had become a real home to them both. Robert Patter- son with about twenty-five young men, then marched to this clearing and built a block house, which stood on the spot which is now the intersection of High street and Broadway, Lexington. When he had time to work instead of fight, he be- came a surveyor and there was plenty to do, because claims were taken up con- stantly by land commissioners from Virginia. He himself became the owner of not less than five thousand acres, which he secured at an average of about forty cents per acre. In the center of this was the little log cabin which he had built and to which he brought his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay. It is this cabin which now stands in Dayton. Around it vines had been planted and the women of the neigh- borhood had supplied dressed skins to furnish it. But it was very different from the stone mansion which was her girlhood home in Pennsylvania. Oftentimes she had to seek safety in the block house while her husband was doing active duty as a soldier. In 1779, he accompanied Colonel Bowman in the expedition against the Shawnee Indians at the old town of Chillicothe and the following year served as captain in General Clarke's raid on Chillicothe and old Miami ; was in command of a company of Logan's regiment in General Clarke's campaign in 1782 against the Indians at Piqua, on the Miami river, and at Laramie. Colonel Logan's command camped three days at the mouth of Mad river, on the present site of Dayton. In 1786, Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, commissioned Robert Patterson a colonel in the state line, and that year his regiment marched to destroy the Macacheek towns on Mad river. Had it not been for these battles and victories with the Indians in which Colonel Patterson was for many years engaged, the Dayton settlement would have been an impossibility. He helped win the site of the city from the red men and secure a peaceful and prosperous home for the pioneers. In the meantime, several children had come to the Pat- terson home until the original log cabin was too small for the increasing family and Colonel Patterson built a two-story log house in which were found more of the comforts of civilization. Later, as Lexington grew and enjoyed the advantages and opportunities of the older east, the Pattersons had a fine stone building there. At that time the old cabin down by the springs was taken to pieces and brought

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to the corner of the yard and used for servants' quarters. There it stood while Lexington grow from a village to a city with tall buildings erected from time to time around it, standing there until its removal to Dayton. Colonel Patterson continued in military service whenever his aid was needed. He was present with his regiment at St. Clair's defeat in 1791 and in the war of 1812, he had charge of the transportation of supplies from Camp Meigs near Dayton north to the army. All of his later years he was a sufferer from wounds received in his campaigns. As the years passed on his landed possessions increased and came to include much of the site of Dayton. The grounds on which the log cabin stands has al- ways been in the Patterson family and nearly all of the land in sight from this high corner of the branching roads, east, west, north and south, belonged a hun- dred years ago to Colonel Robert Patterson. He had altogether twenty-four hun- dred acres through pre-emption rights while the patent to the special quarter sec- tion on which the log cabin now stands is signed by James Madison, president, October 5, 1816. In 1795, a town was laid out and in 1796 actual settlers came up from Cincinnati by land and by boat and built their homes upon the streets named after the Revolutionary officers who founded the town. In 1804 Colonel Robert Patterson came to Dayton to live. The locality was not new to him for he had fought campaign after campaign all through this valley against the Indians and the land had attracted him by its evident fertility. In those days if the origi- nal settler wished to assign any of his property to another and it was not yet paid for, the purchaser made the payments direct to the United States government and it was thus that Robert Patterson by purchase from Daniel Cooper, became owner of three hundred and twenty-two acres and the patent from the United States government came direct to him signed by James Madison. Other tracts of land were acquired by him until his holdings were twenty-four hundred and seventeen acres.

At the time of the removal of Robert and Elizabeth Patterson to Dayton, their family had numbered eleven children: William, who was born in the Lexington stockade, January 30, 1781 ; William Lindsay, who was born January 2, 1783, and died six days later; Rebecca, born February 9, 1784; Margaret, born June 9, 1786; Elizabeth, born January 27, 1788; Francis, who was born April 6, 1791, and died at Palmyra, Missouri, September 11, 1854; Catherine, who was born March 7, 1793 ; Jane, born May 25, 1795 ; Harriet, born March 25, 1797 ; Robert Lindsay, born May 27, 1799 ; and Jefferson, born May 27, 1801. Their Ohio home became famous as the Rubicon farm. The log house stood in an orchard of apple, pear and peach trees and it contained seven rooms with an outside kitchen and smoke house. A sawmill was built and constituted not only one of the first, but one of the most important industries of the locality for two years. Mill and farm hands lived in cabins around the mill and cabins were also built for the negroes whom they brought with them from the south. There were no bridges over the Miami, but there were two ferries. The first bridge was built in 1819, Robert Patterson being one of the commissioners who had the matter in charge. By the time Robert Patterson had been living in Dayton four or five years, the town had five stores and three taverns and a new courthouse gave an air of distinction to it. His taxes for the first year in Dayton were two dollars and eighty-five cents. Dayton became the county seat in 1803 and improvements of many kinds were begun.

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Robert Patterson soon began to add to its importance. He built the old stone mill that stood for many years on Warren street and operated the sawmill which had already been erected on the west side of the farm. He owned a gristmill, a fulling mill, a sawmill and a double-carding machine, all in complete order. The old log grist mill was destroyed by fire October 7, 1815, and was replaced by the stone mill which long figured as one of the most important industries of Dayton. The family had lost heavily through the exigencies of war and it seemed that the fire would have discouraged a man of sixty years, but Colonel Patterson mani- fested the resolute and inflexible spirit which was his characteristic while at once he reset to work to retrieve his losses. In 1816 he built a large brick house, the present Rubicon, on the rise of land between the Main street road and the coun- try road, now Brown street, in the midst of a beautiful grove. Here the Patter- sons kept open house, their home being continually filled with guests for they dispensed the old-time hospitality. One of their descendants spoke in later years of her mental pictures of Colonel Robert Patterson and his wife as they neared the last years of life. She told of "the slight figure of Elizabeth Patterson in a shaker bonnet and print skirt riding out of the east gate of the farm to the big road on a pillion behind her husband." She spoke of Robert Patterson "in the uniform of the war of 1812, walking at a slow pace over the farm, his back slightly bent and holding his lame arm crooked behind him against the wound he had received nearly fifty years before from a savage's tomahawk." He continued an active factor in the world's work, however, to his last days. He was one of the incorporators of the company that erected the first bridge-a covered toll bridge across the Miami-the bridge being opened for travel in January, 1819. He was greatly interested in the project of the building of a canal and excavation was in progress through Colonel Patterson's farm at the time of his death. He was a man of deep religious experience and faith and, although a Presbyterian in his be- lief, gave liberal help to other denominations. In the volume "Concerning the Forefathers" it is recorded :

"Family bereavements and failing health were gradually loosing the ties that bound Robert Patterson to the world. His Indian campaigns were long over and his later soldier service a thing of the past. His business interests, hampered often by his credulity and generosity, had not always prospered, and the re- verses he suffered might have discouraged even a braver man. For years after being disabled by wounds, he received no pension, proudly declaring that so long as he was able to make a living he would not ask help from the government. But in 1811, being then still suffering from the wound received at the Miami villages in 1786, he did ask for a pension and got it. He drew twenty-five dollars a month from 1812 until 1819, when, by the advice of friends, he applied for arrears at the same rate from November 5, 1786, to 1812. In 1819, all his wounds had grown more painful and attacks of rheumatism, brought on by exposure, added to his disability. The hand wounded thirty-three years before was at times so painful as to be carried in a sling and he never was able to write his name except haltingly and with greatest difficulty. This is a reason for his few and short let- ters during the last twenty years of his life. The Colonel did not live to receive his back pay. Allowance for six years' arrears came to his executors several years after his death.

JEFFERSON PATTERSON

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"Captain Nisbet spent several days with Colonel Patterson in July at his re- quest and there were many callers from town, as it became generally known that death was near at hand. He bore his sufferings with fortitude; the endurance of the inevitable which he had learned in his young manhood while fighting for home and peace and family, did not desert him on his death bed. He became weaker and weaker, opening his eyes only occasionally to let them rest upon his 'eaver luvely Elizabeth,' who stood by his side as she had done for fifty long years. He 'babbled o' green fields ;' spoke as if remembering battles and hunting scenes; at last lapsed into unconsciousness and a five o'clock on the afternoon of Nov- ember 9, 1829, the gallant old soldier answered taps for the last time. The re- veille was on the other side of the river, where there are no Indians, nor creditors, nor musket wounds, but the triumphs of a finished career. At the bedside of the dying man with Mrs. Patterson, were their sons Francis, Robert L. and Jeffer- son ; daughter Catherine, Dr. Haines and other relatives. Interment took place the next day in the old Fifth Street graveyard. Twenty years afterward, his son Jefferson Patterson removed the body to the present Patterson burial lot in Woodland, where he now sleeps above the valley, the river and the town."

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History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume II, Part 87

Author: Drury, Augustus Waldo, 1851-1935; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, pub Publication date: 1909 Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1092

Author: Drury, Augustus Waldo, 1851-1935; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, pub
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1092