Copyright notice

This article is from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. Copyright ©1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

Printer-friendly page

Patton, Sadie Smathers

By George Myers Stephens

28 Sept. 1886–2 Jan. 1975

Sadie Smathers Patton, local historian, was born in Henderson County, the daughter of John Wesley and Mary Rickman Smathers. She was educated by private tutors and read law under a Hendersonville attorney. As senior court reporter she served in most of the counties of western North Carolina. Active in numerous local and regional historical and patriotic organizations, she was a founder and trustee of the Cherokee Historical Association, producer of the outdoor drama, Unto These Hills . From 1941 to 1957 she was a member of the executive board of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History.

Sadie Patton was the author of Ghost Stories and Legends of the Mountains (1935), The Story of Henderson County (1947), Sketches of Polk County History (1950), Saint James Episcopal Church, Hendersonville (1953?), Buncombe to Mecklenburg: Speculation Lands (1955), and The Kingdom of the Happy Land (1957).

Her husband was Preston Fidelia Patton and they had an adopted son. She was buried in Calvary Churchyard, Fletcher.

References:

Asheville Citizen-Times , 25 Apr. 1954, 6 Apr. 1958, 9 June 1958

North Carolina Biography , vol. 3 (1956)

William S. Powell, ed., North Carolina Lives (1962)

Subjects: 
Origin - location: