Frederick Patterson

Named after the noted abolitionist, Frederick Douglass Patterson was born in 1871, one of five children of Josephine Utz (also spelled as Outz, or Qutz) and Charles Richard Patterson. His siblings were Mary, Catherine "Kate", Dollie, and his younger brother Samuel C. After getting established as a blacksmith in town, Charles married Josephine Utz, a young local mulatto woman of German descent. Frederick graduated from the old Greenfield High School in 1888, and went on to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. ==Career and family business==

Patterson withdrew from college in his senior year before graduating, taking a job as a high school history teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. Seeing the rise of "horseless carriages", Patterson started development of the first Patterson-Greenfield car, completed in 1915. His two styles competed with Henry Ford's model T and sold for $685. He was the first African American to own and operate a car manufacturing company. Patterson is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African-American Success (2014). == Politics ==

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. Patterson also joined the Third Wind Foraker club. He became the 2nd vice-president of the National Negro Business League, during Booker T. Washington's term as leader. Patterson joined the Republican Party and served as a Greenfield's annual delegate to the Ohio Republican Party caucus. 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. For his work in the 1920 election, he was rewarded with a position as alternate delegate to the 1924 Republican National Convention. ==Personal life==

Patterson married in 1899, and fathered sons Frederick Postell Patterson (1903–1973) and Postell Patterson (1906–1981). Patterson died after a long illness on January 1932, at his home in Greenfield. ==References==