Early History of Phillips County

The Land, the Legends and the Lore

by Patty Smith

Published 2020

John Patterson

Two hundred and twenty years ago (1800), in a small Indian village, five miles north of Helena, the first Anglo-Saxon child in the new settlement was born to Phoebe and William Patterson. With the Arkansas Post being the next closest settlement, William obviously trusted the Indians to safely deliver his new son, John Patterson.

When questioned in later years, John Patterson would state that one of his earliest memories was watching as his father was killed by gunshot in 1808 while resting in front of the fireplace one night at their log cabin close to the mouth of the St. Francis River. Only a few months later, his mother, Phoebe Dunn Patterson married Sylvanus Phillips.

John’s childhood was probably typical of frontier children. Growing up in what we know as the St. Francis National Forest, he learned to trap, fish and hunt at an early age, with older half-brothers leading the charge. (His step-father, Sylvanus was so involved in land speculating and politics that it seems unlikely that he spent much time with his dozen step children.) Sometime after the death of his mother circa 1815 – 16, Sylvanus attempted to get John to pay $750.00 for the raising of the Patterson children. Local courts sided with Sylvanus, but when John took the matter to state courts, they sided with John.

Around 1818, John’s brother, Frank, while hunting along the L’Anguile River, found his future home. “Trapping was good, game was plentiful, the country unoccupied, so he built himself a little cabin on the high bluff overlooking what is now Patterson’s Branch about one and one-half miles south of Marianna” near Bear Creek Lake, which at that time was nothing more than a creek. (Signage on Highway 44 marks the locale of this home.) Frank brought his young wife to this new home, “but the loneliness and terrors of the wilderness were too much for her and in a few months she persuaded her husband to return to the settlements” near Helena. Frank gave the cabin and the land to his brother, John.

John Patterson lived at this cabin for two years before marrying and taking his bride to the remote wilderness. Two children were born to this union, Frank and Phoebe. John soon married again, and it was this second wife who taught John to read and write. (Phillips County Historical Quarterlies information, taken from the L’Anguile Chapter, states that John Patterson was married seven times. Census records and marriage records show marriages to Elinor Glass, possibly Sarah Anderson, Eliza Way, Mildred ?, and Mary ?)

“The early years of his life so far as we know were uneventful. He set his traps along the river, hunted bear and deer along the slopes and hollows of Crowley’s Ridge; each year he cleared a little more land, planted his crops and harvested them, and lived at peace with his Indian neighbors. His only diversions were occasional trips to Helena to trade his furs for supplies and getting married.”

John’s cabin was about one-half mile from “Lone Pine”, where John Murrell planned his murderous forays and divided the spoils of the flatboat robberies. There is little doubt that John knew the infamous Murrell, and it is speculated that John may have even bartered food and livestock supplies with Murrell, but he no doubt had little choice in the matter if he valued the life of himself and his family. A few even speculated that John might be a part of Murrell’s Mystic Clan, but most thought not and stated that he was a good and sensible man.

Around 1845, new settlers began to move into the area, and in 1856, John Patterson took legal possession of the land he moved to thirty-five years prior. In 1866 he ran for the state Legislature, and in later years joined the Methodist Church. However, when a dispute evolved concerning the purchase of an organ, John left the church stating that the Lord spoke to him in his sleep saying, “Johnny, git ye out from among them; they be not My sheep,”

In his 76th year, at a July 4 picnic in Lee County (originally Phillips County), John Patterson recited the following:

“I was born in a kingdom;
Raised in an empire;
Attained manhood in a territory;
Am now a citizen of a state
And have never been 100 miles
From where I l now live.”

(The above refers to the fact that when John was born this area belonged to the kingdom of Spain, then the empire of France, and in 1819 the Territory of Arkansas was formed, and finally, the State of Arkansas in 1836. In 1873, Lee County was formed from parts of Crittenden, Monroe, Phillips and St. Francis Counties.)

John Patterson died in 1880, and is buried two hundred yards north of the spot on which the cabin he called home stood for sixty-eight years of his life. He willed his little farm to Mr. Rufe Griffis on the condition that Mr. Griffis provide for the latest Mrs. Patterson for the rest of her life. No part of the cabin in which he lived remains, as it was pulled down and burned for fuel years ago.

Little is known of John’s children. Census records for 1850 and 1860 show that he had in total, 13 children: Francis (Frank), Phoebe, Mary, Elizabeth, Freeman, John, Eleanor, Gideon, James, Martha, Margaret, Amos and Columbus. It is quite possible there were more children, born between census years and died at a very young age before the next census.

“Oh thou lonely settler in the wilderness, thou unkempt backwoodsman with the flint-lock rifle and heart and nerve of Achilles! It was thou, and those like thee, with many failings and as many virtues that made possible “The immortal league of love that binds our fair, broad empire, state with state.”

---

Primary sources for these articles include the Phillips County Historical Quarterlies, Shinn's Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas; Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas; Down the Great River by Glazier; Arkansas Historical Documents and Land Grants; The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture; Courts and Lawyers on the Arkansas Frontier; Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi; USGenWeb; Ancestry.com; FamilySearch.org; Phillips DNA Project.