Matthew Patten

     Matthew Patten was born circa 1691 in Northern Ireland.² He was the son of NN Patten. He married Margaret.² He died on 25 September 1773 in Biddeford, York County, Maine.³
     
     With his wife Margaret, and at least one child, he came to New England in the first wave of Scots-Irish immigration and settled at Wells, York County, Maine.² He was granted fifty acres of land by the town proprietors on 12 July 1720.² At First Church, Wells, on 6 August 1721, Matthew Patten "recognized his baptismal Covenant in Publick Assembly & promis'd Submission to ye Care & Goverment of this Chh & Baptism was administred to John Son of Mathew Paton hereupon."^4,2 After living on his Wells grant for six years, he sold the land to Richard Deane, Margaret Patten releasing her dower, and purchased from William Jones of Boston another fifty acre tract on the north side of the Saco River in the town of Biddeford (now in the town of Saco), with two smaller lots of pasture of six acres each, one being on Goosefair Brook.⁵

     From Biddeford Patten moved farther east to Falmouth his skill as a blacksmith being in demand, and the latter town made him a grant of land in lots of varying size.² In 1730, Matthew Patten "of Falmouth" was again purchasing property in Biddeford another fifty acre farm from John Tarr, for £200.⁶ Two years later he sold his Falmouth house and grants, only the smaller portion of which had been laid out, to Mr. Samuel Waldo and Col. Thomas Westbrook.⁷ Within a month he bought from Joshua Cheever a house and one hundred acres on the southwest side of the Saco River in Biddeford, giving in return a mortgage which he finally discharged in 1745.⁸

     In 1733 Matthew Patten and Thomas Gilpatrick, another Ulsterman, bought six acres of marsh, at Winter Harbor.⁹ The Tarr fifty acres was sold to Benjamin Hill in 1734 for £350, a transaction which brought Patten £150 more than he had paid for the property four years before.¹⁰

     Land speculation apparently appealed to Patten. Beyond the settled fringe of the seacoast lay vast tracts of wild and vacant land. By 1752 he had bought from William Neck and James Morgan of Marblehead one-quarter of their great holdings up the Saco River and on its easterly bank — one lot of one hundred and another of four hundred and ninety acres.¹¹ Fifty acres of the Neck and Morgan purchase were sold to Joshua Hooper in 1748.¹² He had also added some forty-seven acres to his Biddeford farms.¹³

     As were most Ulster Scots, Matthew Patten was Presbyterian.¹⁴ In 1739 he and others petitioned the town of Biddeford that "those who call themselves Presbyterians be set off from support of Rev. Mr. Willard," but met with refusal. Probably he became reconciled to the local forms of worship as the new meeting-house (Biddeford lower parish) was built upon his land in 1759.¹⁴

     In his will dated 31 August 1773, Matthew Patten left his farm on the Saco River in Biddeford to his sons John and Robert, who were named executors. Also to the sons were given two-fifths of the land at Deerwander which belonged to his deceased son James, his salt marsh at Leighton's Point, one-half of his interest in the saw-mill at the falls in Biddeford, two cows, a horse and all of his clothes. To his beloved daughters Lydia and Susanna, two-thirds of the Weare's landing land in Pepperellboro, bought from William Neck, all his right in the grist-mill on the western side of Saco River, the other half of his interest in the saw-mill in Biddeford, all of his household goods, four cows, two-fifths of the land at Deerwander, that part of "my old homestead farm which lies next to Thomas Emery's land" and pasturage and wood-cutting privileges. To his beloved daughter Jane, one-fifth of the Deerwander land and one-third of the land in Pepperellboro. Witnesses: Moses Morrill, Simon Wingat, Paul Junkins.¹⁵