CONCERNING
THE
FOREFATHERS
Being a Memoir, with Personal
Narrative and Letters
Of Two Pioneers
COL. ROBERT PATTERSON
AND
COL. JOHN JOHNSTON
The paternal and maternal
Grandfathers of
John Henry Patterson
of Dayton, ::::: Ohio
For whose children
this book is
written by
Charlotte Reeve Conover [p. v]
[Preceeded by a color plate of a stained glass window in the City Building at Cincinnati, representing the settlement of Losantiville and inscribed as follows:
On September the 22nd, 1788, a large company of Kentuckians, headed by Col. Patterson and John Filson, crossed the Ohio River and were met by Judge Symmes, Israel Ludlow and Matthias Denman, who came from Limeston on what is now the public landing. They dedicated the city by the name of Losantiville with appropriate ceremonies. On January 2d, 1790, Governor St. Clair arrived and made Losantiville the county town, naming it Cincinnati, after the newly founded society of that name. [P. iv]
Copyright, 1902
By
NATIONAL CASH REGISTER COMPANY
Dayton, Ohio
THIS BOOK WAS ILLUSTRATED,
ARRANGED AND PRINTED BY
THE WINTHROP PRESS, 32 AND
34 LAFAYETTE PLACE, NEW
YORK, U. S. A. DECORATIVE
DESIGNS BY DAVIS SCHWARTZ,
DAYTON, OHIO : : : : : [p.vi]
“THERE is a moral and philosophical respect for our
ancestors which elevates the character and improves
the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral
feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger
obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind than a con-
consciousness of an alliance with departed worth.”
Daniel Webster. [p. vii]
FOREWORD
IF our petitions sometimes read “From the offenses of our forefathers, good Lord deliver us,” the antithesis should also not be absent – “Of the virtues of our forefathers, Lord make us not unmindful.” That phantasmal influence called noblesse oblige has held more than one young man to the stern and unexpected demand of duty when nothing else could, and no legacy is so stimulating to send down to the third and fourth generations as the record of pure living, high thinking and deeds of self sacrifice. That we in America have been, until lately, so careless of family history, is a reproach that we are slow in wiping out.
This book is an attempt to set forth the plain history of a double family line, whose representatives, both past and present, belong to what Plato calls “the treasure honorable of hereditary worth.” As such, it is dedicated to the two youngest inheritors of the name,
FREDERICK BECK PATTERSON
AND
DOROTHY FORSTER PATTERSON,
with the hope that they will remember that
“He who to ancient wreaths can bring no more
From his own worth, dies bankrupt on the score.” [p. ix]
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