JOHN THOMAS CAMPBELL PATRICK

The following bio was taken from page 337 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

A Scotch-Irish descendant, William Patrick of North Carolina, was the first known ancestor of the Rusk County Patrick family.  Between 1765 and 1810 William and his wife raised their family of ten children in Rowan County, North Carolina. One of their older sons, Robert Patrick, born in 1769, married Elizabeth Leeper in 1792.  Shortly after their marriage the young couple settled in the Bethel Community of York County, South Carolina.  They had five children.  Robert and Elizabeth remained in York County until their deaths in 1841 and 1843.

Three of Robert and Elizabeth Patrick’s sons were: James Moore (1795-1867), who married Leah Froneberger and had no children; John Thomas Campbell (1814-1868), who married Eleanor Currence and had five children; Marion Leander (1818), married Jane Aiken and had no children.  The five children of John Thomas and Eleanor were: Mary Elizabeth (1824-1916), Robert Daniel (1843-1886), John Currence (1845-1926), Isabella Cathrine (1848-1881), and Margaret Frances (1852-1880).  All five children were born in South Carolina and came to Texas with their parents.

In 1854 the Patrick brothers, James, John Thomas, and Marion, led Presbyterian families from South Carolina to Texas.  After four months, the wagon train of Patricks, Clintons, and allied families crossed into Texas in November, 1854.  They stopped near the Pine Grove Presbyterian Church in Rusk County.  The church community and the piney hills of East Texas appealed so to the South Carolinians that they all decided to settle in the area.  John Thomas Patrick and his brothers purchased land along the Shreveport-Douglas road about five miles southwest of Pine Hill.

In 1855 John T. Patrick erected a six-room log house on the Shreveport-Douglas road near the present Pleasant Springs Presbyterian Church.  The other brothers, James and Marion, built their homes nearby.  In the years following the Patricks steadily improved their land to raise cotton, corn, and other crops.  Cotton was the main cash crop and enough was being raised to warrant the erection of a gin on the Patrick land.  The Patricks made the two-week-long trip to the Shreveport market annually to sell their cotton.

The Patricks attended Pine Grove Presbyterian Church.  Two-week-long annual revivals, or “protracted meetings,” were held at Pine Grove.  The Patricks left early in the mornings because the drive by ox wagon took two hours.  They listened to one sermon, ate lunch, and heard a second sermon before returning home.  The children went to school at Holly Springs located on John T. Patricks’s farm.

In 1863 John t. Patrick enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving under Captain M.D. Leverett in a home guard company for Rusk County.

John T. Patrick died in 1868 on his 425-acre estate.  Eleanor Patrick survived her husband, John T., by eighteen years, living those last years with her children in the community which came to be known as Patrick in honor of the pioneer settlers who had established themselves there.  Today, 1981, four of John T. Patrick’s great-grandchildren – Boyd Patrick, Connie Belle Patrick, Sudie Mae Patrick Burks, and Hattie Maxwell and also one great-great –granddaughter, Betty Patrick McCormack, have homes located on part of the 425-acre estate that John Thomas Patrick purchased in 1854 from Archibald Watkins.

Submitted by Hattie McCann Maxwell