PATTERSON of St. Vincent
Posted on May 28, 2007
Posted UnderFamily Pages |
James Edward PATTERSON
Father of noted African-American William L. Patterson
James Edward PATTERSON was born in Kingstown, St. Vincent about 1850. His mother was said to have been a Carib Indian, his father, a “full-blooded African”. His parents were not believed to have been married, and their names are not known. His mother was reported to have been referred to as “Lady Estridge” (”might have been the last name of a British family she worked for”), and was said to have been a “witch doctor”.
James Edward Patterson is said to have left St. Vincent “at a young age” because “there was nothing for him in St. Vincent….the poverty of the mass of the people drove him to seek his fortune on the seven seas”. Patterson first worked on the deck of ships, but then found a place in the galley, “became a good cook, then a chef”…..”in later years he was the first black steward ever hired by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company”.
Patterson is described by his son William L. Patterson as “a dark-skinned man, not more than five-feet-five-inches tall; he could not have weighed more than 135 pounds. His face was ascetic and kindly and did not reveal the intense devotion he gave to his religions beliefs-nor the terrible temper that was aroused when he was crossed”. “My father found his fortune on the Pacific Coast despite his color. As steward on a Chinese clipper, he was able to participate in the lucrative racket of smuggling Chinese into San Francisco. (This was after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, later signed by President Chester A. Arthur, in 1882.)
Patterson writes that his father made enough money from smuggling to buy a house “on Mason Street in San Francisco. It was about then that he met and married my mother (about 1885), a widow in her late thirties. My brothers and I were born in what was called “the smuggler’s house.”
Patterson married Mary GALT, daughter of William GALT. She was born into slavery about 1850 on a cotton plantation near Norfolk, Virginia. Her father was said to the the son of his master, a Mr. GALT, who owned the adjoining plantation. Mary’s mother was Elizabeth Mary TURNER, the reputed daughter of “Cap’n Turner”, who owned the plantation on which Mary was born. Elizabeth’s mother is reported to have given birth to three of Turner’s children. She stayed behind when the Civil War broke out and Mr. Turner “sent his white family north to Bridgeport, Connecticut; the Black west to California. My grandfather Galt sent his son along with them.”
Mary Galt had been married to Charles POSTLES (”who came west from North Carolina”) before her marriage to Mr. Patterson. Her first husband died shortly after the birth of their daughter Alberta.
Sometime around 1900, Patterson “became an Adventist missionary and went off to the island of Tahiti, with the family left to survive as best it could……thereafter his missionary work carried him away for years at a time. He was said to have “had little formal education but his command of both Spanish and English was considerable, and he also spoke French and German.” Sometime after 1900, Patterson “was to take the family to a Seventh Day Adventist Sanatorium, located near St. Helena in Napa County (California). Father had written a vegetarian cookbook for the Adventists, and they were going to introduce its recipes for about two years at the St. Helena Sanatorium.”
Mary Galt and James Edward Patterson had three children, all sons. They were; William L. Patterson, Walter Patterson, and another son whose name is not known. By 1905, Patterson “was off again to the South Sea Islands.” After that, Patterson’s wife was helped by her sister, Anne MOODY, in finding a house for rent. Her daughter Alberta was living in San Francisco at this time with a family named Morton, who sent her to school, “and eventually she became a masseuse.”
SOURCE: The Man Who Cried Genocide: An Autobiography. Contributors: William L. Patterson - author. Publisher: International Publishers. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1991. pps. 15 - 28.
COURTESY: William L. Patterson Photo courtesy of www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
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