William Harvey Patterson (3 February 1810–24 May 1895), member of the House of Delegates, was born free in New Kent County and was the son of Rebecca Ann Patterson, a free woman and landowner, and probably of a white man, John Bailey, who by his will at the time of his death about 1847 left her ninety-one acres of land and him three acres. On 22 November 1832 Patterson married Mary Ann Dungey, who was a relative of Jesse Dungey, who also served in the House of Delegates. Before her death on 15 November 1848 they had at least three daughters. Patterson acquired about eighty-seven acres of Dungey family land at the time of her death. On 14 March 1850 he married Lutilda Bailey. They had at least four daughters and five sons.
The United States Army camped on Patterson's property in 1864 and consumed or carried away a considerable supply of provisions, for which he later filed a claim of $658.50 and was compensated with $228. In 1866 Patterson was one of the founders of Second Liberty Baptist Church composed of Black former members of Emmaus Baptist Church, which licensed him to preach in October 1867. Four years later Patterson ran for a seat in the House of Delegates. As a result of redistricting after the 1870 census, New Kent and Charles City Counties had been combined into a single district, and the two African American incumbents agreed not to compete for the seat. New Kent delegate William Henry Brisby campaigned anyway, but when a third candidate entered the race he feared that splitting the Republican vote would give the election to the Conservatives and so he called for a second convention, at which Patterson, his friend and "a thorough going union man and republican," was nominated. Patterson went on to defeat easily the white Conservative candidate by a vote of 867 to 571 for a two-year term in the House of Delegates.
The Conservative Speaker of the House appointed Patterson to low-ranking seats on the relatively inconsequential Committees on Public Property and on Resolutions. With no previous experience in public office, Patterson was not an active member. He introduced a bill that passed during the second session, in 1873, to prohibit cutting trees or other actions that would "obstruct the free passage of boats, canoes or other floating vessels, or fish" in the lower reaches of Sycamore Creek in New Kent County. The most important vote that Patterson cast was with the majority to override the governor's veto of a bill to prohibit payment of taxes with interest-bearing coupons from the bonds that the state issued in 1871 to refinance the public debt. Payment of taxes with coupons starved the treasury of revenue needed for financing the new public school system.
Patterson did not run for a second term in 1873. His mother was recorded in several census returns as living with his family, most likely on the land that she inherited, until her death in 1880, at which time the county allowed him to inherit her property "as compensation for his services rendered in the past (6) years of her life." Curiously, the land tax returns listed the property in her name up until the time of his death. Patterson farmed and served as a minister, but perhaps in part as a consequence of caring for his large family he did not prosper. He and his wife mortgaged a plot of land encompassing almost fifty acres to borrow money in 1884 to pay off a bank loan, and then the following year had to sell that property to repay the man who had lent them the money. In 1886 they sold two small parcels of their land, and near his death Patterson was in arrears for non-payment of the tax on five acres of land. In the last year of his life, his property had dwindled to thirteen acres of land worth $19.50 and the remaining 108.5 acres of land listed on the tax rolls in his mother's name that was worth $217.
Lutilda Patterson died on 15 October 1887 and William Harvey Patterson died at his home on 24 May 1895. He was buried in a family cemetery in New Kent County.
Sources Consulted: Biography in Luther Porter Jackson, Negro Office-Holders in Virginia, 1865–1895 (1945), 33; birth, marriage, and death dates in Patterson Family Bible Record (provided by third-great- granddaughter Sylvia Hathaway), photocopy in Dictionary of Virginia Biography editorial files, Library of Virginia (LVA); additional family information provided by fourth-great-grandson, Rodney Hathaway; United States Census Schedules, New Kent Co., 1840–1880, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; Land Tax Returns, New Kent Co., 1847–1895, Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, LVA; New Kent Co. Deed Books, 3:380 (third quotation), 638–639, 4:156–158, 451–452, 6:581–582, 8:91–93; Consolidated Index of Claims Reported by the Commissioners of Claims to the House of Representatives from 1871 to 1880 (1892), 182, although Patterson's claim apparently does not survive in the Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims: Virginia, 1871–1880, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, Record Group 217, NARA; LaVonne Allen, "William Harvey Patterson," New Kent Historical Society Newsletter (Mar. 2012): 4, identified as son of John Bailey and Rebecca Ann Patterson; 1871 election description and first quotation in deposition of William H. Brisby, 27 Feb. 1877, in his claim 19,204, Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims: Virginia, 1871–1880, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, Record Group 217, NARA; Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, 1776–1941, no. 4 (1871), State Government Records Collection, Record Group 13, LVA; Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser, 10, 14 Nov. 1871; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the State of Virginia, 1871–1872 sess., 33, 389–390, 1872–1873 sess., 234; Acts and Joint Resolutions Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Virginia at its Session of 1872–'73 (1873), 167 (second quotation).
Photograph in Legislature of Virginia, Session 1871 and '72, Special Collections, Library of Virginia.