Robert Patten

     Robert Patten was born on 21 June 1732 in Biddeford, York County, Maine.² He was the son of Matthew Patten and Margaret (—?—) (Patten).¹ He married Susanna Goodwin on 8 May 1784.³ He died on 14 March 1819 at age 86.⁴
     
     Brothers John and Robert Patten in partnership, purchased property in Pepperellborough in 1765 and 1772, and were deeded land and one-sixteenth of the saw-mill in the same town by their father. They also bought land in Bowdoinham and Pownalborough. Robert was co-executor with brother John of their father's will. Also to the sons were given two-fifths of the land at Deerwander which belonged to their deceased brother 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.⁵

     In 1778, Robert Patten was a member of Captain Nason's train band.³ He was over fifty when he married Susanna Goodwin and there is no evidence to suggest he had been married previously.³ On on 2 March 1786, Robert Patten deeded a two hundred acre tract to Josiah Hill, who deeded it back to him on March 22, but in 1787 it was again conveyed to Hill encumbered with Matthew Patten's legacies to his daughters, Lydia and Susanna.⁶

     In deeds he is called mariner, trader, merchant, yeoman and gentleman, and in 1808 he must also have been a ship-builder as there is a record of his having a nearly completed vessel on the stocks. Most of his very active life seems to have been occupied with real estate, however, and, while his brother John lived, they operated in partnership. They began by buying one hundred acres in Pownalborough (Woolwich) from Ebenezer and Alexander Gray and seventy-four acres in Bowdoinham from Aaron Hinkley in 1762 and 1763.⁷ As this was the time of the settlement of their Arundel and Saco cousins in Topsham, it is possible that Robert and John also contemplated moving to the Kennebec region, but, if so, they changed their plan and remained in Biddeford, but it was not until 1791 that Robert sold the Bowdoinham land.⁸

     Beside picking up small lots in Biddeford, Saco and Brownfield, they had great acreages to dispose of after the deaths of their brother James in 1770 and their father in 1773.³

     Sisters Jane Gray, Susanna Patten and Lydia Patten, and brother Robert, sold portions of the Deerwander acreage. They began selling in Phillipsburg (now Dayton and Hollis) in 1799.⁹ Caesar Patten, who witnessed the 1799 deed, was a family slave in 1800.¹⁰ In 1802, Lydia having died, Robert, Jane and Susanna petitioned for a division of their Phillipsburg estate.³

     After 1803 the sales became very frequent and one suspects that Patten was hard pressed for money, for in 1808 begins a series of executions against him which were satisfied by his vessel on the stocks at Biddeford and the sale of small tracts of land. He conveyed the unsold balance of the Deerwander property to his sons John and Nathaniel in 1808, sold a shore in a saw-mill to Samuel Pierson and mortgaged land to Jotham Perkins.¹¹ More executions followed in 1809 and 1810, and after mortgaging his home farm on the Winter Harbor road to Ichabod Fairfield.¹² He was so involved that he conveyed away his equity of redemption in two small lots to Samuel Hill and Dr. John Allen. His last deeds were to his son John Patten, merchant, of Arundel, in 1812 and 1814, of what appears to be his house (and presumably his father's) with no explanation of why the process was repeated.¹³ Probably he and his widow spent their last days with this son.³