Frederick Patterson

Named after the noted abolitionist, Frederick Douglas Patterson was born in 1871, one of five children of Josephine Utz (aka Outz or Qutz) and Charles Richard Patterson.{{Cite book|last=Smith|first=Jessie Carney|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=steLXpuOONEC|title=Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events|date=2012-12-01|publisher=Visible Ink Press|isbn=978-1-57859-425-2|pages=205|language=en}} His siblings were Mary, Catherine "Kate", Dollie, and his younger brother Samuel C.

Their father was a former slave who had left to Greenfield, Ohio from Virginia shortly before the American Civil War.{{Cite web|last=Berk|first=Brett|date=2019-02-15|title=The Little-Known Tale of the Only African American Automaker|url=https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a26360175/african-american-automaker/|access-date=2020-10-21|website=Car and Driver}}{{Cite web|date=June 19, 2020|title=C.R. Patterson and Sons is the first Black-owned car company in the U.S.|url=https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/19/c-r-patterson-and-sons-african-american-black-owned-car-company-patterson-greenfield/|access-date=2020-12-12|website=Autoblog|language=en}} After getting established as a blacksmith in town, Charles married Josephine Utz, a young local mulatto woman of German descent.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2205&dat=19800809&id=AxRGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fOUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2810,989673 Reginald Larrie, Black History Feature: "He Was Owner of an Auto Factory"], Baltimore Afro-American, August 8, 1980, accessed May 5, 2013 In 1873, Charles and J.P. Lowe, a white carriage maker, established a successful carriage manufacturing business called J.P. Lowe & Company.

The Pattersons cared deeply about the education of their two sons, Frederick and Samuel. Frederick graduated from the old Greenfield High School in 1888 and went on to Ohio State University.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} While at the university, he played on the football team in his junior year on the 1891 Ohio State Buckeyes football team, the first African American to do so.[https://books.google.com/books?id=pUEz-tUVu9AC&dq=Greenfield+High+School+Frederick+Patterson&pg=PA78 Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-breaking and Pioneering Historical Events], edited by Jessie Carney Smith (1994); 2nd edition, Visible Ink Press, 2003, pp. 78-79 He withdrew from college in his senior year before graduating, taking a job as a high school history teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a different career than his father's business, where his brother Samuel was already working.

{{Main|C.R. Patterson and Sons}}

Frederick Douglas Patterson took over the business after his father died in 1910.{{Cite book|last=Hartshorn|first=William Newton|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uT4LPyzvEWUC|title=An Era of Progress and Promise: 1863-1910|date=1910|pages=448|language=en}} Seeing the rise of "horseless carriages", Patterson started development of the first Patterson-Greenfield car, completed in 1915.{{Cite book|last=Wolny|first=Philip|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zn1mDwAAQBAJ|title=African American Entrepreneurs: Stories of Success|date=2017-07-15|publisher=Greenhaven Publishing|isbn=978-1-5345-6079-6|series=Lucent Library of Black History|pages=41–42|language=en}} His two styles competed with Henry Ford's model T and sold for $685.{{Cite web|date=2017-10-11|title=The Only African American Automobile Company|url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/only-african-american-automobile-company|access-date=2020-12-12|website=National Museum of African American History and Culture|publisher=Smithsonian|language=en}} He was the first African American to own and operate a car manufacturing company.

After producing somewhere between 30 and 150 vehicles, he had difficulty getting financing for expansion, Patterson decided to change his business rather than compete head on with the major Detroit industry.

In 1920, he changed the name of his company to Greenfield Bus Body Company. He built bodies for trucks and buses set upon a chassis made by other manufacturers. The Great Depression had a devastating effect on his company, as widespread financial problems caused his customers to cut back on bus orders.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} Patterson died in 1932. His son, Postell Patterson (1906–1981), who had worked with him, closed the business in 1939.

No Patterson-Greenfield autos are known to exist (as of 2004), but some of his father's C.R. Patterson & Sons Company carriages have survived.{{cite web|author=Theobald|first=Mark|year=2004|title=C.R. Patterson; Greenfield Bus Body Co. Dines & Simpson, 1850s-1873; J.P. Lowe & Co. (Lowe & Patterson), 1873-1893; C.R. Patterson, Son & Company, successors to Lowe and Patterson, 1893-1897; C. R. Patterson & Sons Co., 1897-1921; Greenfield Bus Body Company, 1921-1938; Greenfield, Ohio|url=http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/p/patterson/patterson.htm|publisher=Coachbuilt}}

Patterson is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African-American Success.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

Patterson married in 1899, later fathering sons Frederick Postell Patterson (1903–1973) and Postell Patterson (1906–1981).

Patterson was a Methodist.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} At a time of a rise in fraternal organizations, he joined the Freemasons, where he rose to the level of Worshipful Master of the Greenfield Cedar Grove Masonic Lodge#17.{{When|date=December 2020}}{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} Patterson also joined the Third Wind Foraker club.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

He became 2nd vice-president of the National Negro Business League during Booker T. Washington's term as leader.{{When|date=December 2020}}

Patterson joined the Republican Party and served as a Greenfield's annual delegate to the Ohio Republican Party caucus.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} As a delegate and an African-American businessman, he was important to the Warren G. Harding 1920 campaign in turning out the Ohio black vote.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} For his work in the 1920 election, he was rewarded with a position as alternate delegate to the 1924 Republican National Convention.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

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Category:1871 births

Category:1932 deaths

Category:People from Greenfield, Ohio

Category:African-American schoolteachers

Category:Schoolteachers from Kentucky

Category:African-American businesspeople

Category:American founders of automobile manufacturers

Category:American chief executives in the automobile industry

Category:American automotive pioneers

Category:20th-century African-American people