John Patton of Virginia
He is so designated to distinguish him from his son, John Patton, who emigrated to Ohio. We find he was from the north of Ireland. He was one of eight brothers. We do not know what time he located in Virginia, but it was not later than 1774. He was born about 1754. He was married in about 1775. His eldest child, Nathaniel Patton, born February 22, 1776; was married in Rockbridge County, Virginia, 1797. Nathaniel Patton located in Adams County in 1814, on the farm where Ramsey Duffey now lives. He went to Rush County, Indiana, 1824. His wife's name was Polly Robinson. He was the father of fourteen children, all of whom but the eldest, John S. Patton, followed him to Decatur County, Indiana. He died there in 1844. The second child of John Patton, of Virginia, was Martha Campbell. She married James Campbell, in Rockbridge County, Virginia. They came to Adams County and settled near Decatur, Brown County. She left a large number of descendants, among whom are the Wassons of Cherry Fork. Thomas Patton, a son, lived and died on West Fork. The wife of Gen. William McIntire was his daughter. His other children removed to Peoria, Illinois, in the forties. Nathan Patton owned the Sam McNown place in Brown County. He was a money maker and Adams County was too slow for him. He left after a few years' residence with his entire family and located in Iowa. All trace of him and his family have been lost to the other Pattons. John Patton, the youngest son, was born in Virginia in 1787, a notice of whom is elsewhere herein. A daughter, Jane Patton, died in middle age, unmarried. Mary Patton was born in Virginia in 1789, and was married to Charles Kirkpatrick in 1806. They came to Ohio and located on Eagle Creek. Three children were born to them, and Kirkpatrick died in the War of 1812. In 1813, she married William Evans, and ten children were born of this union, the eldest of which was Edward Patton Evans, of West Union, father of one of the editors of this work. She died March 22, 1830, at the age of forty-one. Nancy Milligan, the fourth daughter of John Patton, of Virginia, was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, about 1791. She married William Milligan, and they located near Unity in Adams County. She was the mother of a large family. J. C. Milligan, her son, was a County Commissioner of Adams County from 1860 to 1863. Her son, John Milligan, is living near Decatur, Brown County.
John Patton, of Virginia, died in 1809 in Rockbridge County. He made his will in July, 1809, and it was probated in October, 1809. From the tone of his will, it is judged he was a very pious, God-fearing man. The inventory of his estate on file indicates he was an ordinary Virginia farmer. He owned 278 acres of land in one body, about five and three fourths miles from Lexington, on the upper Natural Bridge road. Two hundred acres of his land lay in Burden's Grant, and the remainder, seventy-eight acres, just outside of it.
The original grant of the Burden tract was from George, the Second, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King and Defender of the Faith, etc., and on condition that one family for every thousand acres be settled on it within two years. There were 92,100 acres in the grant. The land was to be held in free and common socage and not incapite or by knight service, and to pay a rent of one shilling for every fifty acres, to be paid yearly in the Feast of St. Michael, the Archangel (September 29). Three acres out of every fifty were to be improved within three years. All these conditions were abolished by the Virginia Legislature during the Revolution.
John Patton bought his two hundred acres in Burden's Grant, Decem ber 3, 1782. That is the date of his deed, but he probably had it contracted for long before that. He purchased of James Grigsby, who died April 7, 1794, and was the first person buried in the Falling Spring cemetery.
John Patton hated the institution of slavery, and had intended to remove from Virginia had he lived, but he charged his children to remove from a slave state, which they did. His descendants are very much the same type of man that he was himself; strong, prudent, economical, honest. careful, despising all sham and pretense, and hating oppression and in justice in every form.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900