....

   A native of Tennessee, H. S. Patterson owned a good farm in that state, and was also engaged in business in Smith County, as a merchant for a number of years, and identified with the lumber interests of his native place as the owner and manager of a sawmill.  In 1870 he emigrated with his family to California, and in 1873 settled in Fresno (now Madera) County, near Borden.  Taking up government land, he cleared and improved a ranch, on which he resided until his death, at the age of sixty-seven years.  His wife, whose maiden name was Lydia Aminett, was born and bred in Tennessee.

   Coming with his parents to the Pacific coast in 1870, Harris W. Patterson has spent the larger part of his life in Madera County, where he assisted his father in the improvement of the old home ranch.  He now owns a valuable farm of two hundred and forty acres, ninety-five acres of which he sows to alfalfa, devoting the remainder of it largely to grain raising.  He is also interested to some extent in dairying, keeping about twenty-five cows.  Progressive in his views, and a man of great activity and enterprise, Mr. Patterson carries on a very extensive business during harvest time, a proprietor of a threshing-machine, being owner of one of the two steam threshing-machines in Madera County. He has been employed in this business for twenty-eight years, and in operating his steam thresher employs twenty-one men, paying them $55 per day wages during the season.  With his machine, for which he paid $6000. he threshes out about sixty-five thousand bags, or one hundred and thirty-five thousand bushels, of grain a season.

   Mr. Patterson married Minnie Lillian Lester, who was born in Iowa, and they are the parents of four children, namely:  Ward A., Frederick L., James B. and Merritt P.

Guinn, J. M., History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the San Joaquin Valley, California, (Chicago: Chapman Publishing, 1905), page 656.