The collection consists of personal and business correspondence, political papers, account books, legal documents, and land papers related to the Patton family, and is particularly focused on the activities of George Smith Patton (1856-1927). Topics covered include railroads, Patton’s senate campaign, irrigation, land sales, and the development of the San Marino area.

George Smith Patton (1856-1927) was born in Virginia. His father, George Smith Patton (1833-1864), served with the Confederate Army during the Civil War and was killed in the Third Battle of Winchester in 1864. In 1866, his mother Susan Thornton Glassell Patton (1835-1883) joined her brother Andrew Glassell in California, along with ten-year-old George, his sisters Ellen (who later married Thomas Brown) and Susan, and brother Andrew (known to the family as Glassell). In 1870 Susan married George Hugh Smith (1834-1915), a cousin of her first husband. The couple had two children, Anne Ophelia Smith (1870-1951), who later married Hancock Banning, and Ettinge Hugh (1876-1887). In 1880 George Patton joined the law firm run by his uncle Andrew Glassell and stepfather George Smith, and the firm was subsequently known as Glassell, Smith, and Patton. Susan died of breast cancer in 1883. In 1884 George Patton married Ruth Wilson (1861-1928), the daughter of Benjamin Davis Wilson and Margaret Hereford Wilson. The Pattons and Ruth’s sister Annie lived in San Marino, where their children George Smith Patton (1885-1945) and Anne Wilson Patton (1887-1971), called “Nita,” were born. In 1903 the Shorb estate in San Marino was purchased by Henry E. Huntington, who appointed Patton as general manager of the ranch. George Smith Patton (1885-1945) married Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953), known as Bea, in 1910. Their daughter Beatrice Smith Patton was born in 1911, followed by Ruth Ellen Patton (Totten) in 1915 and George Patton III in 1923. Patton was killed in a car accident in Heidelberg in 1945.

356 items

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