Dr. George Patterson’s epigrammatic, impromptu response to a local journalist’s query - why Rockdale, not Hillsboro where Patterson was born, benefited from the family gift - probably was not the reporter’s hoped-for, profound statement worthy of the occasion, the May 25, 1963, dedication of The Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library. The doctor’s ambiguous reference to sentiment was buried in the story.
Nevertheless, Patterson, obviously a man of few words, became a riveted constituent of Rockdale history when he donated to the city $12,500 toward a dynamic community fundraiser to build a $30,000 library.
Ultimately, the town’s first public library was named in honor of Patterson’s mother, who was born in Rockdale Sept. 17, 1879, and spent an obscure childhood in the booming frontier railroad town. Lucy Hill later met and married Charles Patterson, and moved to Hillsboro where she lived until her death on March 16, 1961.
George Patterson, choosing Rockdale as his beneficiary of cash, also bestowed gifts by the volume: 50 first-edition books, including Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone With the Wind,” “Paradise Lost” by John Milton, and “Mountain Meadows Massacre” by Juanita Brooks, in addition to famous works of Charles Dickens, Jack London, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, Sherwood Anderson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Eugene O’Neill, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thornton Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other prominent authors.
The distinguished California neurosurgeon also gave the Rockdale library an original letter from George Washington dated Aug. 18, 1783, that endorsed the return of Timothy Brinley Mount to his home. Brinley had been thought by his friends and neighbors to be a Tory, but actually was a spy in Washington’s army.
Other unusual additions to the Patterson collection are two personal missives from author Margaret Mitchell; eight oil paintings by artist Bill Bender, including “Nature’s Symphony,” “Saquaro Cactus” and “Two Shades of Morning”; artist Robert Wood’s “Laguna Beach” and “Spanish Oaks and Autumn Gold”; a portrait of Lucy Hill Patterson by artist Armarel Marmin; two bluebonnet landscapes created by renowned Texas artist Palmer Chrisman of Temple; Patterson’s portrait by Bill Hampton; and various other artists’ work.
Patterson’s gifts to Rockdale included Victorian and Queen Anne furniture, with a showcase hand-painted French-style escritoire - a charming lady’s desk, equipped with an inset clock, drawers and candle holders. While most of Patterson’s extensive library collection is displayed on the premises, rare items are kept in the city vault.
Librarian Melanie Todd said the Rockdale library’s history is recorded in numerous scrapbooks and albums filled with newspaper clippings, letters and photographs, including pictures of Mrs. Patterson as a child in Rockdale.
Mrs. Todd recalled meeting the executor of the Patterson estate in the 1990s when the Patterson Community Center on Mill Avenue near Fair Park was expanded. The library actively promotes the museum-quality displays that adorn the building as well as the extensive collection of rare books and letters through various special theme exhibits.
Meanwhile, art and furniture from the Patterson estate are placed throughout the building for the public to enjoy, as well as a Kabuki Samurai doll, a gift to Alcoa from Komatsu Ltd.; an aluminum splash wall hanging donated by Alcoa; and photographs including a picture taken by David Galbreath of the Sugarloaf Mountain Bridge; the old St. Joseph’s Catholic Church photographed by Dr. Lucile Estell; a Rockdale street scene, circa 1956; and a Saturday Evening Post photograph donated by author and Saturday Evening Post writer George Sessions Perry, a Rockdale native.
Patterson died in a fire in Los Angeles in 1976, and he further provided for Rockdale in his will, giving additional funds to expand and remodel the library in 1980 and to build and later expand the Community Center near Fair Park.
Art in the library at 201 Ackerman St. in downtown Rockdale is a silent sideline to the activities of the book center, which began in 1954 when volunteers went house-to-house to raise $500 and collect used books to start a library, according to a Peggy Cooke article in The Rockdale Reporter.
Rockdale’s first library found a home on the second floor of Rockdale City Hall and opened a year after the citywide book drive, augmented by the loan of volumes from the Texas State Library, its shelves stocked with more than 2,000 hardbacks. The library quickly outgrew its lackluster headquarters, and in 1957, an effort began to raise money for the town’s first public library building at its present site. Patterson’s endowment matched by the city and other donations made the dream for a library building a reality.
Today, The Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library has an extensive collection of books, a children’s library, public computers, an impressive genealogy section and history center, which opened in 2003, and a section dedicated to George Sessions Perry. Remarkable, too, is the library’s remarkable upshot from lowly institution that borrowed the books it loaned the public, to a valuable state-of-the-art hub of literary activities.
“I don’t believe any other library has a history quite as interesting as ours,” Mrs. Todd said.
