The Robert W. Owens of Lakewood, CO:Information about Jonathan Pattee
Jonathan Pattee (b. September 15, 1773, d. September 1849)
Notes for Jonathan Pattee:Notes:
1.Jonathan lived at North Salem on the site now called Mystery Hill or
"America's Stonehenge."
2. He was a Baptist and asked to have his church tax remitted because of
this fact.He was one of the petitioners to incorporate a Baptist
Christian Society in Salem in 1796.
He lived in a somewhat wild a nd isolated spot where there were many caves
which he used for storage purpos es.Many highly erroneous, but
none-the-less romantic stories have been told about these caves in North
Salem, NH.
3. "...Mystery Hill... 22 ruined stru ctures stand on top of a 200-foot
hill.These structures, originally called Pattee's Caves, as Jonathan
Pattee was the first settler known to occupy the hill, were simply
incorporated by him into his cellar and storage system with out
questioning their antiquity or how they got there.Subsequently, the
s tone buildings suffered a common archaelogical fate - they were used as
a sto ne quarry, in this case to build the sewers of Lawrence, MA."
"What remained o f the ruins was finally acquired by the New England
Antiquities Research Asso ciation...the identity and date of the
buildings now tentatively dated, thr ough Carbon-14 dating of surface
charcoal over the ruins, from 1225 to 865 B. C.
4.Jonathan Pattee
In 1823 Mystery Hill became the property of a settler named Jonathan
Pattee.
The recent history of the hill starts with Jonathan Pattee. Pattee was a
farmer who lived on the site from 1826 to 1848. There a re many different
and conflicting stories about Pattee, including that he was a robber, ran
an illicit still, and operated a stop on the famous 'undergrou nd
railroad' that spirited escaped slaves from the south to safety. One
thi ng for sure is that he used one of the structures as a cellar for his
farmhou se.
Rumors abounded that Pattee had built the structures, with the help of
his five sons, for no apparent reason. This seems unlikely as one of the
site stones was found locked in the stump of a tree that started growing
around 1 769, long before Pattee came to the area.
An ardent abolitionist, Pattee was said to have turned the stone caves
and structures of Mystery Hill into a way station for the Underground
Railroad, hiding slaves in the ancient edifices found there. Pattee, an
insurance millionaire of the time, built a home direc tly upon several of
the most important ancient buildings of the site. Experts estimate that
during the next 50 years, contractors bought and removed over 40% of the
stone structures found at Mystery Hill. To this day, many of the o lder
churches, stone fences and stone houses in the area contain bits of ston e
from the site (although most of the stones were used as street curbing
an d for the construction of the nearby Lawrence Dam). Ancient
inscriptions can still found be on the stones used to build these more
modern-day edifices.
Even as the Mystery Hill site was being hauled away by quarrymen, other
sites like it were not going unnoticed by more learned men.
In 1893, Professor Hug h Morrisson, Chairman of the Architecture
Department of Dartmouth College and Daniel Fiske, an interested author,
wrote about the impossibility of the meg alithic structures at Mystery
Hill and the surrounding New England area being the work of Amerinds or
American settlers.
Sources:
1. Title: "Peter Patt ee of Haverhill, Massachusetts: A 'Journeyman
Shoemaker' and His Descendants"
Repository: New England Historic Genealogical Society
Publication: NEHG Regi ster Vol. 147, Apr. 1993
Media: Magazine
Page: 175-176
by Marie Lollo Scalis i and Virginia M. Ryan
2. Title:Pattee Genealogy
Author:Linwood Melvin Pa ttee
Repository: Haverhill Public Library, Haverhill, MA
Haverhill Collection
Special Collection # R929.2/p315.1
23 page manuscript, excerpt from Linwood' s unpublished book
3. Title: "Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds"
by Charles Ber litz (1972) Doubleday
4. Title: Mystery Hill - A
More About Jonathan Pattee:
Occupation: Cordwainer.
More About Jonathan Pattee and Betsey Mallon:
Marriage: Aft. November 19, 1795, Bradford, Merrimack, NH.
Marriage Notes for Jonathan Pattee and Betsey Mallon:Sources:
1. Title: "Peter Pattee of Haverhill, Massachusetts: A 'Journeyman
Shoemaker' and His Descendants"
Repository: New England Historic Genealogical Society
Publication: NEHG Register Vol. 147, Apr. 1993
Media: Magazine
Page: 175-176
by Marie Lollo Scalisi and Virginia M. Ryan
2. Title: Vital Records of Methuen, Massachusetts to the End of the Year
1849
Published by the Tops field Historical Society
Topsfield, Mass., 1909
Children of Jonathan Pattee and Betsey Mallon are:
- Sarah Pattee, b., Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Harriet Pattee, b., Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Mary Pattee.
- Anna Pattee, b., Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Jonathan Pattee, b. April 24, 1796, Salem, Rockingham, NH, d. April 22, 1814.
- Susanna Pattee, b. May 22, 1798, Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Clarissa Pattee, b. June 13, 1800, Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Betsey M Pattee, b. June 09, 1802, Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Selina Pattee, b. August 07, 1806, Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Abigail Pattee, b. August 29, 1809, Salem, Rockingham, NH.
- Asenath Pattee, b. December 10, 1810, Salem, Rockingham, NH, d. Bef. April 1814.
- Dorcas Savory Pattee, b. January 02, 1813, Salem, Rockingham, NH, d. November 10, 1853, Epsom, Merrimack, NH.
- +Seth Jonathan Mellen Pattee, b. May 09, 1815, Salem, Rockingham, NH, d. December 24, 1900, Salem, Rockingham, NH.