Integrated Learning-Living Communities

A guided tour of the Patterson Homestead (close to the University of Dayton) provided an opportunity for students to view the Rubicon Farm (named for the river that now travels under campus to the Great Miami River.  

Referring to the site as the Patterson Homestead is a bit of a misnomer. The original home, farm and mill erected on the site were actually the work of Daniel C. Cooper. According to Rosalie Yoakam, the City of Dayton owes its beginning and survival to Daniel C. Cooper. He was born Nov. 20, 1773, in New Jersey, the oldest son of a wealthy farmer. Trained as a surveyor. Cooper came west to look after the land interests of Jonathan Dayton, a New Jersey Congressman. He first cut a road from Ft. Hamilton to the mouth of the Mad River and then served on the survey party led by Colonel Israel Ludlow, who named the city they laid out in 1795 after Jonathan Dayton, who never visited the settlement. The development was planned by a consortium consisting of Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory; Gen. James Wilkinson (later arrested for treason as a Spanish spy); Ludlow and Dayton. The men arranged to buy 60,000 acres for 83 cents an acre from Judge John Cleves Symmes, assuming Symmes possessed clear title.

In 1796, Cooper built a cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Jefferson Street. He later  bought more than a thousand acres south of town and built a cabin and several mills there, which he later sold to Colonel Robert Patterson. This tract — the Rubicon Farm — is today’s Patterson Homestead.

But dubious ethics threatened the viability of the town.  Symmes had in fact failed to purchase the land from the government at the prior price. The original investment group — St. Clair, Wilkinson, Ludlow and Dayton — backed out. In 1800, the government offered the land for $2 an acre. The price was too high for most of the settlers already in situ, on the assumption that they held clear title. Many left the area, and at point, Dayton was down to just five families.

Cooper saved the town. He talked to the government, and in 1801 he was appointed titular proprietor. Buying 3,000 acres at the $2 price. He gave land and money to churches and schools, donated land for a cemetery and a park and persuaded new settlers to come to Dayton.

Robert Patterson’s tenure was ethically dubious from the start. Slavery had been banned in all new territories according to the Norwest Ordinance of 1787, and the 1803 Ohio Constitution forbade slavery; yet Robert brought enslaved workers from Kentucky, registering them as free blacks on the Montgomery County record of “Black and Mulatto Persons:" One, William, continued to work for the Pattersons until death.  Another, Moses, attempted to run away, but was caught by William LIndsay (Elizabeth Patterson’s brother) and returned to Kentucky, and enslavement. The City of the Dayton filed legal proceedings against Patterson on behalf of two other enslaved workers — Edward and Lucy — winning their freedom and forcing Patterson to formally free others (although their fate is not well accounted for).

Robert Patterson’s grandson, John Patterson, was a coal supplier (today’s dirtiest fossil fuel), but was concerned about his employees pocketing some of the proceeds. He bought the ‘incorruptible cashier’ from James Ritty, one of two brothers concerned about employee theft from their Dayton saloon, The Pony. While his firm — NCR (National Cash Register) — put Dayton on the map. At one point, NCR accounted for 95% of the market share domestically and as much as 80% internationally — Patterson and several of his executives were set to go to federal prison in 1912 for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act until the firm’s public service during the Dayton Flood of 1913 led to all charges being dropped.