♂Robert Patten

Robert Patten (born about 1694) was a Scotch-Irish^W settler of Arundel, a coastal town of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in what is now Maine, who probably came to New England from the Protestant colony at Coleraine in the north of Ireland. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Patten.

From Coleraine to Arundel

Coleraine, a market town of County Londonderry, had been settled with Protestant colonists during the Plantation of Ulster^W. Robert Patten is said to have left it for America in 1727, with his wife, their young son and two of his brothers. In the same account, his wife, whose maiden name was McGlenthlin, died on the voyage. Another history of the family puts his crossing ten years later, in 1737, when his son was six weeks old.

Both histories agree that by about 1737 he had settled at Arundel, on the Saco road. He is said to have married again at Scarborough on 26 December 1743. His bride, Florence Johnson, was most likely a daughter of James Johnson of Scarborough, another Scotch-Irish settler.

Family and will

The family’s ties ran up the coast to Topsham. His son Hector, probably the Actor Patten who had moved there in December 1760 at the age of twenty-three, was living at Topsham, and his daughter Mary married William Wilson (1741–1826) of Topsham in 1769.

Robert Patten made his will at Arundel on 15 March 1775. He reportedly left his sawmill at Topsham to Hector, and named his wife, his sons Robert, James and John, and his daughters Margaret, Mary and Rachel. Which of his wives was the mother of his children is not known, and neither is the date of his death.

Notes

Sources for his life

His crossing, his two marriages and his will are known from a sketch of the ancestry of Jane (Patten) Wildes in George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, vol. I (1909), pp. 214–15, which calls him her “immigrant ancestor”. Little gives the will only in summary and cites no source for the marriages. The birth year 1694, and a birthplace in the parish of Dunboe near Coleraine, come only from a profile on WikiTree; no record of either is known.

1727 or 1737

Little has Robert Patten crossing in 1727 with “their young son” and settling at Arundel “about ten years later”. The Wheelers’ History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell (1878), pp. 846–47, names four brothers from Coleraine, Actor, William, Robert and Matthew Patten, and admits two dates: “According to one account they all came over at the same time (about 1727). Another account places the date of Robert’s arrival at 1737.” The Wheelers make Robert’s son Actor born in Ireland on 22 January 1737, “only six weeks old when his parents emigrated”, and “an only son”. A son born in 1737 cannot be a young son of 1727, and the will names four sons, so the two accounts cannot both be right. Little also names two brothers on the voyage, the Wheelers three.

Hector and Actor

The will’s “Hector of Topsham” is most likely the Wheelers’ Actor Patten, who moved to Topsham in December 1760 and died on 20 July 1816. The two names were used for one man in this family: the printed Topsham vital records list an older Actor Patten, born in Ireland in 1691, whom the Wheelers make Robert’s brother, as “Acter also called Hecter”.

His daughter Mary and her mother

Little’s summary of the will names a daughter Mary. Moses Woodman’s early history of Topsham calls Mary, the wife of William Wilson, the daughter of Robert Patten of Kennebunk, and the Topsham record of her intention of marriage in 1769 calls her “of Arendall”. No source names Mary’s mother. She married in 1769, so she could have been a daughter of the second marriage, and she named a son Johnson, which may echo Florence Johnson’s surname; no record says so. Little calls Florence “undoubtedly a daughter of James Johnson, of Scarborough, also a Scotch-Irishman”, without giving his reason.