Handbook N-P - Fulton County Public Library

Pa
this locality. She and her husband travel considerably for their health and pleasure, and usually
spend the winter in the South, but they continue to maintain their beautiful home at Akron where
their many friends are always welcome. By his first marriage Mr. Patterson had one son, Charles
W., and by his second, a daughter, Maud, now Mrs. Roy Jones of Akron. A sketch of Mr. Jones
and his wife appears elsewhere in this work. Charles W. Patterson was reared in his native county
and attended its common schools. He is now operating a hotel at Amarillo, Texas. By his
marriage with Miss Addie Sibert, he has five children, one son and four daughters: Chloe,
Pauline, Deborah, Herbert and Frances. He and his wife belong to the Methodist Episcopal
church. Politically he is a Republican, and fraternally he affiliates with the Knights of Pythias.
[Henry A. Barnhart, Fulton County History, pp. 255-258, Dayton Historical Publishing
Co., 1923]
PATTERSON, WILLIAM A. [Akron, Indiana]
BIOGRAPHY
One of the representative men of Fulton county and substantial citizens of Akron, is
William A. Patterson, president of the Exchange Bank of this city, with which institution he has
been continuously identified since its founding in 1891. He comes of an old English family that
has been established in the United States for two centuries, and was born in Henry county,
Indiana, February 25, 1851. His parents were Daniel B. and Ruth (Quackenbush) Patterson, and
of their family of four sons and two daughters, but three survive: M. L., Mary P., wife of
[Johnson] E. Burdge, and William A., all residents of Akron. The father was born in New York,
February 15, 1813. Orphaned early, he had his own way to make in the world, and was eighteen
years of age when he came to seek his fortune in Wayne county, Indiana, in which state he passed
the rest of his life. At that time deer and other wild creatures of the forest were plentiful in Wayne
county and many Indians yet remained. Although he never acquired great riches, he became
widely known and esteemed as an aducator, teaching school for sixteen terms after moving to
Henry county. In 1860 he removed to Wabash county and located near Roann, making his home
there until his death in 1896. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and in
political sentiment was first a Whig and later a Republican. William A. Patterson lost his mother
in infancy, her death occurring in Henry county. He attended the public schools until about
seventeen years old, and from that time on became self-supporting. Work in a general store
brought him a weekly salary of $3, not an abundant wage even for that day but it was a beginning,
and without doubt a part of it was thriftily laid aside. More responsibility and higher wages soon
rewarded his industry and reliability, and he spent about seven years in a dry goods store in
Wabash county, removing then to Roann, where in partnership with his brother Levi, he sold the
first dry goods ever disposed of in that town, where he soon became an important factor in other
business enterprises. He embarked in the lumber business and operated a sawmill and then
became a contractor in building gravel roads in Wabash county for an interval of three years. In
1886 he came to Akron and for some years was associated with his brother in the hardware
business and later, for a number of years, was concerned in the buying and shipping of cattle.
While general development and improvement went on at Akron, there were, as yet, no general
banking facilities, Mr. Patterson and his brother for three years acting more or less in a private
financial capacity to relieve public necessities, and it was William A. Patterson who was the prime
mover in arousing the sentiment that made possible the organizing of the Exchange Bank at
Akron, in 1891. Mr. Patterson became the first president of the institution and has never lost
interest in what has become one of the most prosperous banks in this section of the state, his name,
as president, still being one of its best assets. In 1880 he was married to Miss Rose Loder, who
died in 1911, the mother of five children, two of whom survive: Valura P., who is the wife of J. R.
Emahiser, a stock buyer at Akron, and they have two children, Billie J. and Mary Rosalie; And
Levi Loder, who is a third year student at Purdue University, in the scientific department. Mr.
Patterson was married second, in October, 1916, to Miss Annabel Conrad, who was born in Cass