y her 23 year old son Henry to depend on, and Henry had reached the age when young men are usually thinking of starting their own households.
We can only speculate on the security and peace of mind that a marriage proposal from physician Dr. John Brookover must have offered. Sarah married Dr. Brookover on November 30, 1839, just three weeks before Henry married Martha Jones (pictured), at the home of Jacob Lantz in Greene County, Pennsylvania. According to an affidavit from Jacob Lantz's son filed with Martha's Civil War widow's pension file, two justices of the peace had a disagreement about which one of them would perform the marriage ceremony.
In the early 1840's most of the family moved across the Ohio River to Monroe County. Ohio. Elizabeth married Perry Baldwin on Feb 11, 1845. They had seven children. James married Mary Hawkins on March 28, 1858. They lived in Kentucky and had three children.
Sarah and Dr. Brookover adopted a little girl, Mary Jordan, who was born October 1, 1846 in Ohio. Sadly, the little girl died in 1860, at the age of 13.
Meanwhile, Henry and Martha were raising a family. Although they lost their first child, Rhoda Ann at one month of age, those that followed survived to majority: Eleanor Jane, Mary Ann, Thomas Gilbert, David Jennings, William Leroy, John Leonard, Sarah Elizabeth, Phoebe Helen, and Phillip Henry. (Eleanor Jane, their second daughter, would grow up to be the fiery tempered grandmother that vexed my Great great aunt Rouie Rutledge Howard in her childhood.) After about eight years in Monroe County, Henry and Martha purchased land from the government in Washington County, and in 1850 the family settled down on their new farm.
In 1859, their eldest daughter, Eleanor Jane received a proposal of marriage from David Grimes Meade. As she was only seventeen, she had to get her parents' permission before a marriage license could be granted. Her parents gave their consent, and on May 5, 1859, the marriage took place.
Two years later, the Civil War began. Henry, who was already a grandfather, 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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