INTRODUCTION
The following is a compilation of some three dozen “letters home” of my great- great grandfather Josiah Blair Patterson (b. July 9, 1815 / d. May 12, 1864) during his service as a Lieutenant in Company E of the 14th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a component of General A.P. Hill’s famed Light Division of the Army of Northern Virginia. The handwritten originals of these letters were compiled, transcribed (on a manual typewriter!) and published in 1961 by my late uncle, Carroll Ruffin Patterson (1919-1991) of Decatur, Georgia.
As of this date I have never seen the original letters and am uncertain of their current location; perhaps they are in the possession of the Georgia State Archives; perhaps they were returned to those who permitted Uncle Carroll to transcribe them. In any case, the “originals” from which I worked in preparing the documents which follow were found by me in 1999 when I served as the executor of the estate of Uncle Carrroll’s widow, Constance “Connie” White Patterson (1918-1999). It is to my everlasting regret that I was never close to (and hardly knew) Uncle Carroll or Connie. He was my mother , Doris Patterson’s half brother, much older that Mom, and he and Connie had never had any children. Indeed, by the time Connie died in 1999 neither of them had any close living relatives at all. Although I can remember visiting their home in Decatur as a child, I had absolutely no contact with them after going off to college. My only recollections of them as living people are from my childhood; he was a quiet, short, rather blocky looking man with a huge square head (he looked very “bookish” and “clerk-like”, though kindly) and she was a very petite, nice-looking, trim little lady with silver hair (probably prematurely gray) which was always cut very short.
I was quite surprised when I received a call from a neighbor of Connie’s in late 1999. The caller told me that Connie was gravely ill, was not expected to live and that I had been named as her executor. I cannot honestly say that I was even aware at the time that Uncle Carroll had already died (in 1991). I suppose I may have been the only lawyer that Connie “knew” and that she had therefore named me as her executor.
A few days later I received word that Connie had died. After probating her will, I gained access to her home in order to inventory her effects, to make arrangements for the liquidation of her property and to begin the process of distributing her estate to her primary legatee, the Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital of Atlanta. It is hard to express the sense of amazement (and initial dismay) I felt when I first entered her little house: From floor to ceiling, and in almost every room, it was jam-packed literally thousands of documents, many file cabinets, dozens of boxes and hundreds of books. I spent several afternoons at her house just trying to get a sense of what all this was. It gradually dawned on me that these people had been amateur historians and long-time, first-class genealogists.
As I spent more and more time trying to separate what should and should not be thrown out, I necessarily had to read what I was sorting through. I soon realized that most of the documents related, in one way or the other, to in-depth genealogical research done by Connie into her White family line, and by Uncle Carroll into his Patterson line. As I continued to sort through everything (separating Connie’s family research from that of Carroll’s) I became more and more intrigued by the depth--and breadth and quality-- of Uncle Carroll’s research into his (and my) Patterson line. Among his things was a 400+ page manuscript setting forth detailed information ( including photos, deeds, will and Bible abstracts, etc.) on over 1000 descendants (including in-laws) of the patriarch of our branch of the Patterson clan, Samuel Patterson a/k/a “Samuel the Immigrant”, an Ulsterman who settled in the Long Cane/Abbeville/Old 96 area of South Carolina during the late 1700’s. I also stumbled upon the following compilation and outline, prepared by Uncle Carroll from 1961-1963, as well as an old photograph of the author of these letters, probably taken on the occasion of his promotion at age 47 to the rank of 1stt Lieutenant of Company E of the 14th Ga Volunteer Infantry.
I apologize to the casual reader for waxing on ad nauseum, but I am damned proud of my Uncle for his Herculean efforts, all before the advent of computers and the Internet. I have also come to admire my great great grandfather J.B. Patterson for his patriotism, his devotion to his family, his courage, his obvious skill as a writer, and finally, for his courage. He was killed in action on May 12,1864 at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, after having survived dozens of major engagements. As is made abundantly clear in his letters home, he fully appreciated the fact that he was in “harm’s way”.
My own contribution to what follows has beens minimal; it was sheer luck that allowed me to “discover” my uncle’s compilation and all that I have done is scan his documents and “clean up” theresult. At present ( June 7, 2002) my scan has been converted to, and saved in, Microsoft Word .
Like my uncle, I have made every effort to preserve the rather eccentric (though typical of 19th Century writing) spelling, abbreviation and punctuation conventions used by Josiah Patterson. Most of these conventions present no problems for the modern reader. However, Josiah had a confusing—and rather irritating—habit of almost never punctuating the ends of his sentences with periods and of often failing to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a new sentence. One gets used to it but be forewarned!
A few researchers have referenced these letters in the past. It is my fervent hope that they will continue to be referenced in the future. All I ask is the proper attribution be given to both Josiah Blair Patterson and his great grandson Carroll Ruffin Patterson the original compiler.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions.
Carl A. Crowley III
Atlanta Georgia
2002
Carl A. Crowley
429 Glencastle Drive
Atlanta, Georgia 30327
tel 404 237 2502
Cacrowley@GeorgiaLaw.org
cacrowley@mindspring.com
TITLE PAGE Pages 1 thru 20 Pages 21 thru 55 Pages 56 thru 65 Page 66