Patterson, William J.

Born: 1815 Glasgow, United Kingdom

Died: 1886-06-12 Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Flourished: Parkville, Missouri

William J. Patterson, publisher, learned the printing trade in his native Glasgow before immigrating to the United States, where he worked as a printer in New York City in 1847 before moving west the following year. His intended destination was the gold fields of California but he stopped in Chicago, where by 1850 he was working as a printer. Patterson worked at his trade in Chicago for several years in the early 1850s, printing the Eclectic Journal of Education and Literary Review in 1850, and editing the Daily Express and Commercial Reporter about 1852. He subsequently moved to Parkville, Missouri, near the border with Kansas Territory, where he helped to edit the Industrial Luminary and worked as a real estate agent. Patterson was a Free Soil advocate, and the newspaper ran afoul of local residents who wanted Kansas to enter the union as a slave state. In April of 1855, the office of the Industrial Luminary was attacked by a mob, who destroyed the press and seized Patterson. He was reportedly saved from the mob by the intervention of his wife. Patterson fled and in the latter part of 1855 undertook a public speaking tour in the eastern United States in which he lectured on Kansas. The following year he was again speaking in the eastern states, this time on behalf of the presidential campaign of Republican John C. Fremont. In 1856 Patterson also proposed to re-establish the Industrial Luminary under a variant name in Wenona, Illinois. About 1859 he relocated permanently to Montréal, where he continued to work as a publisher, and in 1863 was made secretary of the Montreal Board of Trade and the Montreal Corn Exchange Association. In 1864 he commenced compiling and publishing trade and financial statistics. Patterson married and had at least one son.

Jean-Claude Robert, “Patterson, William Jeffrey,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 11:678-79; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 4, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 247; Western Citizen (Chicago, IL), 25 June 1850, 2:3; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 63; The Kansas Herald of Freedom (Lawrence), 10 February 1855, 3:8; History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri (St. Louis: National Historical, 1885), 171-73; Bangor Daily Whig and Courier (ME), 13 August 1855, 2:2; Portland Advertiser (ME), 21 August 1855, 2:1; The Worcester Palladium (MA), 26 September 1855, 2:5; Kennebec Journal (Augusta, ME), 2 November 1855, 2:5; Vermont Watchman & State Journal (Montpelier), 23 November 1855, 3:8; The National Era (Washington, DC), 26 June 1856, 1:4-5; Lowell Daily Citizen & News (MA), 5 August 1856, 2:3; The Miners’ Journal and Pottsville General Advertiser (PA), 11 October 1856, 2:5-6; The Daily Democratic Press (Chicago, IL), 6 November 1856, 2:1; 1861 Census of Canada, Saint-Laurent, Montréal, Montréal, Quebec, Canada East, 174 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2009); The Gazette (Montreal), 14 June 1886, 3:5; 18 June 1886, 3:5-6.