James Patton (ca. 1692–30 or 31 July 1755), land speculator and frontier leader, was born likely at Donegal in the province of Ulster, Ireland, and according to tradition was the son of Henry Patton, a member of the landed gentry, and Sarah Lynn Patton. Legends and undocumented family histories preserve little reliable information about his early life. Patton may have captained a merchant ship as early as the 1720s. In 1734 he became a burgess in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. The following year, after parting from his employers under a cloud, he was piloting vessels for Walter Lutwidge, a shipping merchant in the English port of Whitehaven. Millions of pounds of tobacco from Maryland and Virginia landed in the busy port annually. Whether Patton engaged in any of the smuggling for which the region was known is unclear. It is also unclear whether he joined Lutwidge on trips to Angola to procure enslaved people for the American market. Later in Virginia, Patton bought and sold African people both for his own use and for the benefit of relatives.
Patton may have married Ally, surname unknown, who died in Whitehaven on 26 June 1728. He later married Mary, perhaps Mary Osborne. The number of their children is not known. When Patton wrote his will after his wife's death, he then had two adult daughters who were married and had children of their own. At that time, his married sister and Henry Patton, who may have been his brother, also lived in Virginia.
Patton's name first appeared in Virginia records in a July 1737 Essex County court case, which indicates that he had a financial interest in the colonial lawsuit. His transatlantic dealings are more evident in letters he received in August of that year from William Beverley, a prominent Essex County planter who, with John Lewis, received a grant of 30,000 acres of land on the Calfpasture River in western Virginia. Patton sought to sell tracts of the land to people from Pennsylvania and the north of Ireland. Patton and Lewis, who were related by marriage, were also partners in a venture of their own on the Calfpasture and were employed as well to develop Beverley's grant, called Beverley Manor, of more than 118,000 acres that included the site of the city of Staunton. Patton arranged for Irish and Scots-Irish families to immigrate there. Patton and Lewis played a significant role in settling the Shenandoah Valley and were major stakeholders in Beverley Manor, where each acquired more than 2,000 acres of land.
Patton's family was probably aboard when he guided the Walpole into the Chesapeake Bay in August 1738. Ignoring Lutwidge's instructions, he lingered in Virginia until April 1739, and then returned to Whitehaven. Patton exported three shiploads of merchandise to Virginia between October 1739 and April 1740. During that time, the Patton-Lutwidge relationship soured. Lutwidge fumed that Patton was the "Greetest Knave," and "In short Hell itself cant out doe him." Lutwidge lamented, "its not in the power of my pen to sett forth the wickedness & impudence of that man."
Patton settled his family at Springhill Plantation in Beverley Manor near what is now known as the South River, several miles below present-day Stuart's Draft, in Augusta County. In 1741 he was named a justice of the peace for the Orange County district of Augusta, which encompassed land west of the Blue Ridge. The next year he became a lieutenant colonel in the militia. Patton played a leading role in establishing the Tinkling Springs meeting house and served as a commissioner of that Presbyterian congregation.
Patton and John Lewis soon quarreled, and their animosity divided their church and the Augusta community as they vied for power and prestige. Lewis pursued landed-wealth elsewhere, and Patton cast a covetous eye to the southwest. In 1741, Patton joined the James and Roanoke River Company and acquired controlling interest in its 100,000-acre grant. He reserved for himself choice properties, especially Cherry Tree Bottom on the north bank of the James River, which in 1788 became the town of Pattonsburg (later absorbed by the town of Buchanan) in Botetourt County.
As militia commander, it fell to Patton in December 1742 to inform Williamsburg authorities of a violent clash between settlers and the Iroquois who passed through Augusta. The episode jeopardized relations with the Six Nations and created tension between Virginia and the northern colonies. His report led to a meeting in June 1744 with the governor of Pennsylvania in which he attempted to dispel the suspicion that the Virginians were the aggressors at Balcony Falls. Although his presence at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, conference between representatives of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland and the Iroquois in July 1744 was unofficial, Patton added his signature to a treaty in which the Iroquois gave up their lands between the Alleghenies and the Ohio River.
Having examined the headwaters of the James and Roanoke Rivers and sent exploring parties to the New River Valley, Patton in 1743 petitioned for 200,000 acres of land. He presented himself before the governor and Council of State as the first British subject to seek patents in the watershed of the Mississippi River. Wary of provoking the French in the interior, the Council in 1745 approved a 100,000-acre grant of several parcels of land adjacent to his James and Roanoke Rivers' tracts on the New, Holston, and Clinch Rivers, reserving until later the possibility of an additional 100,000 acres.
Patton organized the Woods River Company and appointed an associate, John Buchanan, agent and, despite his lack of credentials, surveyor. This misstep and its unhappy consequences likely resulted from a desire to commence surveying lest other speculators encroach on his grant. In 1749 Buchanan married Patton's daughter, Margaret. Patton's wife died shortly afterward and was interred in the Tinkling Spring Churchyard. In 1751, probably because of a disagreement, Patton replaced Buchanan with a nephew, William Preston, whose duties included those of surveyor, secretary, and accountant.
When the Augusta County government was organized in 1745 Patton was one of its first justices of the peace. For the next ten years, he dominated county affairs and served as presiding judge of the county court, sheriff, county lieutenant in charge of the local militia, and in various minor offices. He served on and attempted to control the parish vestry that governed the local Anglican Church, and engaged in various disputes, including with his Presbyterian clergyman. A pattern of litigation that had emerged in 1741 persisted. Over time, his court battles included a New River settler who claimed that Patton lacked clear title to the land he was selling, and a running legal tussle with former partner, William Beverley.
On 12 July 1749, the Council of State awarded more than one million acres in the trans-Allegheny, including 500,000 acres to the Ohio Company of Virginia. The powerful syndicate was hostile toward Patton, complained to the Council about his business practices, and with John Lewis's Loyal Land Company filed caveats to restrict his surveying. In 1753, The Ohio Company v. James Patton was heard at Williamsburg, but the General Court's records were destroyed in 1865 and its decision in the case is not known.
In 1752, Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie named Patton and two other commissioners to parley with the Iroquois who were rumored to be unhappy with the Treaty of Lancaster. In June they signed the Treaty of Logstown that confirmed the cession of trans-Allegheny lands and Virginia's right to establish settlements below the Ohio River. The pact was never ratified by the Six Nations, however, and war with France postponed Virginia's ambitions in the West.
In 1748, Patton had unsuccessfully sought election to the House of Burgesses and lost an appeal to overturn the election result. In August 1754, he was present when Dinwiddie, alarmed by the surrender of Fort Necessity and war parties on the colony's northwestern frontier, urged the General Assembly to act. As Augusta County's commanding militia officer, Patton supported the call for military appropriations, and at the next election, he won a seat in the House of Burgesses. In the May 1755 session, he served on the Committee on Public Claims.
In the wake of raids along the New and Holston Rivers, Dinwiddie ordered Patton to raise a company of rangers, or scouts. In July, when Patton was escorting an ammunition wagon into the Upper Roanoke River Valley, he paused at Draper's Meadows, a settlement located on land he sold the previous year. During his visit Shawnee attacked and killed several people, including James Patton, who died of wounds on 30 or 31 July 1755. He is presumed to have been buried at Draper's Meadows, but the location of his grave is unknown.
The attack, including Patton's death, was reported in newspapers throughout the colonies and in England. An inventory of his estate taken in 1758 indicated that he was a prosperous man of business whose family enjoyed a comfortable existence and small luxuries not found in most frontier households, but not the sort of wealth common to elite eastern planters. Patton's Allegheny lands were fully surveyed and patented by the time of the American Revolution, but although his beneficiaries profited financially, they were for years beset by legal challenges to their inheritance. For his pioneering role in opening up western lands to settlement, Patton has been ranked with William Beverley and William Byrd (1674–1744) as a leader in colonial land speculation.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter. How to cite this page:
Sources Consulted:
Donald W. Gunter, "James Patton (ca. 1692–1755)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Patton_James, accessed [today's date]).
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