Born enslaved in Virginia on April 16, 1833. C.R. Patterson escaped, traveling over the Allegheny Mountains, through West Virginia and across the Ohio River. He settled in Greenfield, Ohio, a station on the Underground Railroad.
Patterson learned blacksmithing skills and went to work for a carriage-making business. In 1873, he formed a business partnership with another local carriage manufacturer, J.P. Lowe. For the next 20 years, the duo ran a successful business making expertly crafted horse-drawn carriages.
In 1893, Patterson bought out Lowe and became the sole proprietor and renamed the company C.R. Patterson & Sons. When he died in 1910, his son Frederick took over the business. Frederick was already a pioneer, becoming the first black man to play football for Ohio State University.
Frederick knew that automobiles were the future. C.R. Patterson & Sons produced its first car in 1915. Known as the Patterson-Greenfield automobile, it sold for $850. The Patterson-Greenfield model was comparable to the Ford Model T.
However, the Ohio company couldn’t match Ford’s manufacturing capabilities. In the 1920s, after producing approximately 150 cars, Patterson & Sons switched to the production of trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles.
Hit hard by Jim Crow and then the Great Depression in 1932, the company began to spiral downward. It closed in 1939. There are no known Patterson-Greenfield automobiles in existence today, but several C.R. Patterson & Sons Company carriages have survived.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture states that Patterson & Sons remains the only black-owned automobile company in United States history. C.R. Patterson died on April 20 6 1910 at age 77.