Week 13 – Home Sweet Home

It seems that some of the weekly prompts fit so well with an ancestor who I have recently written about, so I was very hesitant to write about John Patton again this week.  I just couldn’t help myself, however, because finding the home of my 5Xs great-grandfather on accident is one of the greatest genealogical discoveries in my life.  I beg your forgiveness for taking you back to the middle of Pennsylvania for the second week in a row.  

In the summer of 2001, I forced my youngest daughter to travel with me halfway across the continent in search of genealogical records that I needed for my DAR application.  Tracing each generation back in time, our trip was laid out – Moberly, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Huntingdon, Pennsylvania; and finally, to Philadelphia.  We printed off a ream of paper (aka our MapQuest maps) and off we went.

Huntingdon, Pennsylvania is located about 120 miles due east of Pittsburgh, and 198 west of Philadelphia, nestled in the Allegheny Mountains. I “knew” that my 4Xs great-grandparents had married in Huntingdon in 1816 because someone had included that information on an online family tree.  As luck would have it, the church where they were reportedly married was still standing, and the very pleasant pastor of the Huntingdon Presbyterian Church, after hearing about our quest, helped find the record that proved it. Still needing to connect them to their son, our next stop was the Huntingdon County Historical Society.  To this day, I do not understand why they were unable to help with any information on the Patton family, as for several generations my ancestors had been here.  My 5Xs great-grandfather, John Patton was buried here to great fanfare (in case you didn’t read last week’s story), as was his wife, but they had no Patton’s in their card catalog; no Patton’s in their local history books; no Patton’s anywhere!  Overhearing a conversation I was having with one of the docents, a lady asked me if I’d been to State College.  She said she knew there was some house or something of interest having to do with the Patton family over there and that I should check out the Centre County Historical Society. State College was only about a 35-mile drive, so off we went. 

Silly me!  Thirty-five miles through the Allegheny mountains with all its twists and turns ended up being more like five hours. OK, it wasn’t that long, but it sure felt like it.  As we didn’t have our trusty MapQuest map to guide us, we had to rely on the service station road map where the highways were about the width of a hair.  Add to that my daughter didn’t fare well in geography in high school, so I was constantly pulling over to take a look for myself.

We finally arrived!  Until this moment, I had no idea that State College, Pennsylvania is the home of the Nittany Lions and Penn State University.  We located the Centre County Historical Society which (at the time) sat at the northwest outskirts of town on College Avenue. A large brick structure, the likes of which I’d never seen, stood at attention at the entrance. 

Looking at photos of the area today barely resemble what greeted us almost twenty-five years ago.  Much like the Huntingdon County Historical Society, the Centre County Historical Society resides within an old house on an eight-acre tract.  This house, four stories if you count the attic, was in good repair and patriotic bunting adorned the front and side porches as we were there the week of July 4^th.   Our plans were to spend the 4^th of July in Philadelphia (I mean, what better place!), so this day, Monday, was our last day to explore Huntingdon, and now State College.  Of course, they were closed on Monday but that didn’t stop us from peeking in the windows. This is what likely alerted the inhabitants to our presence. 

As we were getting ready to get back in the car, we were met by a few young adults who rounded the back of the building.  We struck up a conversation and they told us they were students at nearby Penn State doing some research work at the Historical Society over the holiday.  I told them we were tracking down documentation so I could join the DAR and had been directed to State College in my quest. When I mentioned that I descended from Colonel John Patton the demeanor went from polite conversation to exuberant excitement. They couldn’t wait to give us a private tour of the Centre Furnace Mansion – which I learned at that moment was built by Colonel John Patton in 1792.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, Colonels John Patton and Samuel Miles purchased 16,000 acres in Centre County and founded Centre Furnace, the first pig iron manufacturer in the area. Colonel Miles was elected Mayor of Philadelphia shortly thereafter, so it was left to Colonel Patton take his family consisting of his wife and five sons and became the first ironmaster. Four more children were born here – three daughters and one son. 

In 1792, the house was certainly nothing you could consider a mansion.  Over time, however, upper floors were replaced/added, but the lowest floor of the mansion, as it remains today, is original to Colonel Patton.  The fireplace in the photo was the one used by his family.  One photo I took on that day, another as it looks today.  We learned all about iron manufacturing and that the brick structure we first noticed was the “stack” erected in those earliest years of Centre Furnace.  John Patton would have had a hand in building both.

John Patton died in 1804 and for several years, Centre Furnace was managed by Samuel Miles’ son, but later generations of Patton descendants took the reins.  Moses Thompson, husband of Mary Irvin, became the last ironmaster in 1842.   He had purchased shares from his brother-in-law, James Irvin, who had become its sole owner through his mother, Jane Patton, granddaughter of Colonel Patton.   In continuing with the tradition of Colonel Patton’s foresight to provide an education for his family and those of his workers’ children, in 1855, James Irvin and Moses Thompson donated 200 acres of Centre Furnace land for the founding of Farmers High School, which was renamed in 1862 to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania. As the college grew, the nearby village became a town which took on the name of the now, Pennsylvania State College.  In 1953, the school was renamed once again, to the name you will most likely recognize – Pennsylvania State University, or Penn State. In January 2024, an historical marker was place at the Centre Furnace Mansion denoting it as the “Birthplace of Penn State”. 

The Centre Furnace ceased operation in 1858, but Thompson family members continued to live in the mansion until 1912. A 1920 letter written by Madison Garver describes the home as falling into despair.  He purchased the mansion and made many improvements which included running water and electricity, gifting it as a wedding present to his son, David.  When David Garver died in 1975, he bequeathed the home to the Centre County Historical Society.

The mansion today reflects the decor as it would have been during the last years of the Centre Furnace ironmaster (1850s).  Photos of collateral relatives adorn the walls, some of the furnishings belonged to long lost family members.   To be able to walk the grounds and explore in rooms where my ancestors lived two hundred years before was an awe-inspiring experience.  

With the discoveries I made that day, the trajectory of my membership application to the DAR changed.  I had been attempting to prove my lineage to Michael Hillegas, through his granddaughter, Henrietta Hillegas Anthony, who married William Patton (son of Col. John Patton). As it turned out, I was able to prove my descent on the Patton line much more easily. I wish I had gotten the name of the lady who overheard my conversation and directed me to take that drive through the mountains to stumble on that “Home Sweet Home.”