JOHN CURRENCE PATRICK

 The following bio was taken from page 336 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

 John Currence Patrick was born along Allison’s Creek in York County, South Carolina, on November 29, 1845.  His parents, John Thomas Campbell Patrick and Eleanor Stephenson Currence, were among the Presbyterian, Scotch-Irish descendants of that district who came to Rusk County in 1854.  The trip, made by covered wagon, lasted four months, and young John Currence walked beside the caravan most of the way.  Once they had crossed the Sabine River, the South Carolinians decided to settle in southwestern Rusk County rather than continue to their original destination farther westward.

John Currence Patrick attended Holly Springs School where he acquired his lifelong fondness for reading.  His parents joined Pine Grove Cumberland Presbyterian Church and prospered in the years before the Civil War.  When the war broke out John was only sixteen years old; consequently, not until two and a half years later, when the Southern military effort was in dire need of men, did John enlist in Company F of the Seventeenth Texas Cavalry (Dismounted) Regiment, C.S.A., and participating in the local military activities.

The years following the Civil War were difficult ones for Southern families, and for John Currence Patrick they were especially bleak.  The Patricks suddenly found that the land and personal property they had accumulated was devaluated, and in 1868 when his father died, John was left in charge of the family’s cotton plantation and of a household of women and former slaves.  Moreover, John’s childhood sweetheart, Jane Wallace, died in 1869.  Long doleful, John remained in his mother’s home until his marriage at the age of thirty.

Martha Jane Heath, only child of Powell Heath and Mary Jane Freeman, was born on October 29, 1857 in Panola County, Texas.  Orphaned at an early age, she was reared by her grandparents, James T. Freeman and Martha M. Bishop, in the Pine Hill Community of Rusk County.  She met bachelor John Currence Patrick at the Pine Grove Presbyterian Church they both attended.  On October 26, 1875, a few days before Martha’s eighteenth birthday, they were married.

John and Martha made their home near the original Patrick homestead.  The surrounding community grew quickly in the 1870’s, and as the need for a new school and church arose, the Patricks were instrumental in erecting in 1880 the building which served the community as both church and school.  John Currence Patrick was a charter member and clerk of the Pleasant Springs (Patrick) Church.  Faithful not only to his church but also to his friends and neighbors, the easy-going, even-tempered John was known in southern Rusk County as a congenial man.

In 1888, after thirteen years of marriage and five surviving children, Marion Leander Patrick, Thomas Powell Patrick, Mary Ethel Patrick, Leah Erin Patrick, and Anna Overall Patrick -- Martha Jane Heath Patrick died of pneumonia.  With help from a black servant and a widowed sister, John Currence Patrick raised his own children as well as twelve orphaned nieces and nephews.

John lived in the Patrick Community until his death on December 11, 1926.  Martha and John are buried in the Pine Hill Methodist Cemetery, Rusk County, Texas.

Submitted by Opal McCann