Robert Patterson (pioneer)

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Colonel Robert Patterson (1753–1827) was a soldier and settler who helped found the cities of Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Born in Pennsylvania, Patterson emigrated to Kentucky in 1775. He served in the Kentucky militia in the western theater of the American Revolutionary War. He took part in George Rogers Clark's celebrated Illinois campaign in 1778, and fought in many other actions during the war. He was a captain of the Fayette County militia in the Battle of Blue Licks, the last major battle of the war in the west. He was, along with Daniel Boone, one of the few senior officers to survive that disastrous battle.

In 1786 he was severely injured in Logan's Raid in the Northwest Indian War. Patterson moved from Kentucky in 1788 and was one of the three founders of Cincinnati.

Patterson moved to Dayton, Ohio, in 1802 and continued his military service as a quartermaster during the War of 1812. Patterson's farm, Rubicon, was located two miles south of Dayton where he and his wife Elizabeth (Lindsay) raised eight children. The land is currently part of the University of Dayton and stretched from there west to the Old soldiers' home (presently the Dayton VA Medical Center). His home is now a historic house museum, known as the Patterson Homestead.

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