The Patterson Homestead is a house museum that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
We caught up with Leo Deluca, the media coordinator for Dayton History, which operates and cares for the property. A local history buff galore, Deluca shared the following facts about the house and the influential family who lived there:
- Construction on the house began in 1816 by an American Revolutionary War veteran named Colonel Robert Patterson, who had settled in Dayton in 1804 and named his land Rubicon Farm.
- The colonel was a co-founder of both Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati.
- Ohio had been a state for only one year when the colonel and his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay Patterson, arrived in Dayton. They had eight children at the time, and would have three more.
- Before the colonel and his family moved into the Patterson Homestead, they lived in a log cabin.
- On Rubicon Farm, Patterson raised hogs, sheep and cattle. He also had an apple orchard and grew corn, wheat rye, oats and tobacco — yes, tobacco!
- The colonel operated a gristmill and sawmill constructed by the former owner, Daniel C. Cooper.
- The colonel's son, Jefferson Patterson, and his wife, Julia Johnston Patterson, expanded the homestead to its present form in 1850.
- Jefferson Patterson helped with the development of Christ Episcopal Church, the Van Buren Twp.'s school and the Montgomery County Fair Association. He was a representative in Ohio's General Assembly during the Civil War.
- Jefferson and Julia Patterson raised nine children, including John H. and Frank J. Patterson, who co-founded National Cash Register (NCR) in 1884.
- The NCR headquarters was built a half-mile away from the homestead, also on the Patterson property.
- After her husband's death, Julia Johnston Patterson moved into town and used the homestead as a summer house.
- In 1900, the house became the NCR Women's Century Club headquarters. By that time one-sixth of the nation's corporate executives had spent a portion of their career at NCR.
- In 1938, Julia Shaw Patterson, the widow of Frank J. Patterson, renovated the homestead in the Colonial Revival style.
- The homestead was gifted to the City of Dayton in 1953, and ownership was transferred to Dayton History in 2013.
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