John Paterson, born in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1744, graduated at
Yale College in 1762, taught school, practised law, and was justice
of the peace in his native town. Removing to Lenox, Massachusetts, he
was elected a member of the first Provincial Congress of that State,
which met at Salem in October, 1774; and of the second, whose place
of meeting was Cambridge, in February, 1775. Deeply interested in the
welfare of his country, he busied himself in enrolling and organizing a
regiment of minute-men, composed of eight months’ volunteers. Eighteen
hours after the news of the battle of Lexington reached them, this
regiment, armed and mostly in uniform, marched away to Boston, and
upon their arrival were employed in constructing the first American
redoubt on the lines about the city. In the battle which followed
they manned and gallantly defended this outwork. After the evacuation
of the city, Colonel Paterson was ordered to Canada, and after some
active service in the North joined Washington just in time to cross
the Delaware and take part in the battles of Trenton and Princeton.
Feb. 21, 1777, he was made brigadier-general, and being attached to
the Northern Department, was present at the surrender of Burgoyne,
and remained in service to the close of the war. In 1786, he aided in
quelling Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts; he was presiding judge of
Broome County, New York, and spent the last years of his life quietly
on his farm, dying on the 19th of July, 1808, at Lisle, now Whitney’s
Point, New York.