Patterson Papers, PC.104
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- Patterson Papers
- Call Number
- PC.104
- Creator
- Patterson family
- Date
- 1748-1925
- Extent
- 5.200 cubic feet
- Repository
- State Archives of North Carolina
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], PC.104, Patterson Papers, Private Collections, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
Collection Overview
Papers of the family of Rufus Lenoir Patterson (1830-1879), agriculturist, banker, and manufacturer of Salem and Caldwell Co., and his second wife, Mary Fries Patterson. Early material (1765-1875) relates to her relatives the Voglers, gunsmiths and silversmiths of Salem, including business letters, papers, and account books, some in German; letters about the Moravian church; currency exchange books in German (1765); Moravian magazine DAS BRUDDEN-BLATT (1857-1859); and Surry and Stokes county grants, deeds, wills, estate and guardian papers. A memorandum book (1855), letters, and diary (1860) of Rufus L. Patterson include references to his flour and paper mills and to the 1860 Baltimore Democratic Convention. Civil War and Reconstruction letters are from Mary Fries Patterson, Rufus's father Samuel F. Patterson, his brother Samuel L. Patterson, members of the Fries family of Salem, Confederate soldiers, legislators, A. M. McPheeters, Samuel F. Phillips, W. W. Holden, John Motley Morehead, and Cornelia P. Spencer. Subjects include politics, the home front, deserters, Negro Federal troops, investments, business activities, sending money to England, evacuation of Smithfield and Raleigh, raiders in western North Carolina in 1865, the peace commission (1865), Governor Holden (1865), condition of freed blacks, and the convention of 1866. Many letters (1880-1903) are from the six sons of Mary Fries and R. L. Patterson concerning schooling and expenses at Bingham Academy, University of Virginia, UNC, and Harvard; Dialectic Society (UNC), YMCA, football; operation of textile mills by sons Samuel Finley, John, and Edmund, and labor problems in North Carolina and Maryland (1888-1903); Rufus, Jr.'s, developing machinery for tobacco manufacture; Frank as sportswriter in Baltimore and traveling with professional baseball team; and Andrew as electrical engineer and professor of physics at UNC and University of Georgia. Descriptions include Idaho, Washington State and western Indians (1888-1890) and Colorado Springs (1899); President McKinley's assassination; and travel in Europe (1892-1902) for entertainment, for study at the Prussian Dyeing School, and on a trade mission to St. Petersburg. Also comments on elections, death of President Garfield, the Spanish-American War, and Deism. A garden book and diary of Mrs. S. L. Patterson mentions weather, illness, earthquake, and travel (1877-1891); copy of travel journal (1831) from Salem to Pennsylvania and New York contains references to slave insurrection in Virginia. Miscellaneous material and pamphlets relate to schools and colleges; churches; clubs; fraternities; scientific societies in North Carolina, Virginia, and London; state and local history; concerts and plays; sports; hotels; the Twin City Hospital Association (1899); and Washington Mills Company (New Jersey and Virginia, 1900). Also photographs, printed speeches, obituaries, fashion and commercial catalogs, children's books and textbooks,books and pamphlets on U.S. industry (1827), internal improvements, public health, WWII, and pacifism.