(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
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John Mercer Patton was born on August 10, 1797 in Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg City, Virginia, United States. He was the third of eight children of Robert and Anne Gordon (Mercer) Patton. His father, a Scotsman who had emigrated to Virginia prior to the Revolution, made a competent fortune in business. His maternal grandfather, also Scotch, was Gen. Hugh Mercer.
After studying a year at Princeton, John Mercer Patton entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania from which he graduated in 1818. He did not practise, however, but returned to Fredericksburg and studied law.
Admitted to the bar, John Mercer Patton began the practice of his second profession in which he soon achieved recognition. In 1830 he was sent to Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Philip P. Barbour and was returned in 1831. Although elected as a Democrat he pursued an independent course. But in the controversy which raged over Jackson's withdrawal of deposits from the Bank, he vigorously supported the President. When a copy of the resolutions of the Virginia Assembly disapproving Jackson's action was transmitted by Gov. John Floyd to Patton, he was unyielding and rebuked the Governor for officially intimating the desirability of a different course. Although successively reëlected to Congress without opposition, Patton resigned in 1838.
Removing to Richmond, John Mercer Patton resumed the practice of law, but public service still claimed him and with both Whig and Democratic support he was elected to the Executive Council or Council of State of Virginia. Unopposed, he was reëlected to this office four times and in 1841, as senior councilor, became acting governor for a brief period following the resignation of Gov. Thomas Walker Gilmer. But the law proved a jealous mistress and Patton's interest in politics waned. On several occasions he declined to be a candidate for public office, but in 1855 he allowed his name to be presented to the electorate for the office of attorney-general of Virginia on the American or Know-Nothing ticket, not because he was eager for the place but because of its relation to his profession.
Defeated in the election, John Mercer Patton devoted his remaining years to his work at the Richmond bar, of which he was the acknowledged leader. In 1854 he was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Medical College of Virginia, in Richmond, on which he served as president until his death in 1858. Patton's greatest achievement, perhaps, was the revision of the Virginia code. With Conway Robinson he was appointed in 1846 to revise and digest the civil code of Virginia; the next year revision of the criminal code also was placed in their hands. Systematically and thoroughly prepared, their Code of Virginia (1849) was far superior to all previous revisions and, modified only by constitutional and statutory changes, it remained the code of Virginia until 1873. Although Patton died before the Civil War began on October 29, 1858.
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Always independent politically, John Mercer Patton was attracted strongly by the Know-Nothing movement and in the campaign he declared his firm opposition to the slightest control over Americans by any foreign power, religious or temporal.
On January 8, 1824, John Mercer Patton married Margaret French Williams, daughter of Isaac Hite and Lucy Coleman (Slaughter) Williams of Frederick County. They had six sons who served in the Confederate army.
