randfather, was old enough to sit back and watch younger men fight the war. Nonetheless, on February 29, 1864 at the age of fifty, Henry signed up and marched off to serve his country. Unfortunately, it was to be an ill-fated effort. He suffered a back injury in a 10 foot fall from the barracks stairs on March 5th 1864, and was left an invalid, spending much of the war's remainder in army hospitals, plagued by residual injuries. He returned home in 1865, but never regained his strength. and died on October 14, 1867, two years before his mother, Sarah. Sarah Jennings Patterson Brookover lived to be 76, having outlived two husbands and all but three of her ten children. She died of kidney failure in Washington County, Ohio on July 14, 1869.
Henry's widow Martha remained on the farm with the help of her sons and a pension from Henry's Civil War Service. Tragedy continued to dog the family. In 1869 her son William drowned in the Ohio River at Parkersburg, West Virginia, and in 1887 another son John met the same fate at Wheeling, West Virginia. Martha died of heart failure August 14, 1894, at the age of 73.
(Much of what is known about the Patterson family comes from papers belonging to Hellen Marr Patterson, the youngest daughter of Thomas and Sarah Patterson. She married Daniel Paynter, an Englishman, and lived in Kansas. Hellen's name comes from the heroine of a popular novel of the day about William Wallace called The Scottish Chiefs. After Hellen's death in 1916, one of her grandchildren copied her family records and gave them to the Meades, The facts given in those papers are supplemented and substantiated by my research into available official records. Further information, including the pictures of Martha Jones Patterson and Sarah Jennings Patterson were given to me by Patterson cousin Mildred Cady.)
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