Hector Patten

     Hector Patten was born in Northern Ireland.¹ He was the son of NN Patten.¹ He married first NN Suter.² Marriage intentions for Hector Patten and Margaret Shear were published on 19 May 1733 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.³ They married on 19 May 1733 at Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.⁴ He married third Mary Armstrong, a widow, before 11 March 1735/36 at Falmouth, Maine.⁵ It is said Hector Patten died in 1780 at the mouth of the Penobscot, township "No. 6", later called, Surry.¹
     
     Hector Patten emigrated in 1727 from Dimbo (Dunboe), near Coleraine, county Derry (Londonderry), Ireland, according to his grandson, Robert Patten of Topsham.² Soon afterward, but whether before or after the death of this second wife is uncertain, he left Boston and settled in Falmouth, Maine, in the south parish which was then called by its Indian name Purpoodock and where there was a large colony of his fellow Ulstermen of Scotch descent.⁵ On 11 March 1735/36, when he sold to Capt. Dominicus Jordan the north-east pew in the parish meeting-house he refers to Mary as "my now married wife."⁶ By 1738 Patten had moved his family to Biddeford where he purchased from Martin Jameson forty acres of land "eastward of Rogers garden" for £135 on 15 December 1739.⁷ He was then called "yeoman alias mason."⁵ His name appears on the Biddeford tax lists from 1738 to 1753.¹ In July 1751, Hector Patten was in court for not frequenting public worship, and, giving a satisfactory reason, was acquitted. He was, of course, a Presbyterian, and may have been, as his grandson said, an elder of that church in Ireland in July 1751.¹ In 1755, Hector and Mary Patten disposed of their Rogers Garden homestead to Ebenezer Bran and, according to tradition, joined their son Matthew at North Yarmouth where Matthew had bought a farm the year before, and later going with this son to the mouth of the Penobscot.¹