About Us
The Patterson School Foundation property is nestled in Historic Happy Valley, a quiet mountain valley between Lenoir, and Blowing Rock. The school rests on the former Palmyra Plantation which belonged to Samuel Legerwood Patterson and Mary Senseman Patterson. General William Lenoir, great-grandfather of Mr. Patterson, was a Revolutionary War hero who once owned much of the Yadkin Valley where the property is located. The legacy of the Lenoirs and the Pattersons is woven tightly into the history of North Carolina and our nation. Samuel Patterson himself served North Carolina in many ways, including being a member of the NC Senate, NC House of Representatives, a Trustee of UNC at Chapel Hill, and the state’s first elected Commissioner of Agriculture. In 1887 Samuel and Mary bequeathed 1500 beautiful acres, running from the top of Ripshin Mountain down to the confluence of Buffalo Creek and the Yadkin River, to the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina for the purposes of an agricultural and industrial school for the “fine minds of mountain boys.”
Patterson School opened Sept. 29, 1909, and throughout most of the first half century of the school’s operation, students worked the school grounds, dam and farm: rising early to milk cows, plowing and working the land, running the dam, saw and grist mill, timbering the extensive woodlands, constructing new school buildings, creating furniture for the school’s use, and maintaining equipment (not to mention walking up the hill twice a day to the Chapel of Rest for church services (until the School converted the Sarah Joyce Lenoir Memorial Library into a chapel for student use).
By the 1960s there was an emphasis on college preparation and acceptance of international students, in 1972 the School became co-ed, and by 2003 was accepting promising high school basketball players. In 1994 the Diocese closed the School, and made moves to sell the property, its 1400+ acres, and accompanying 13 historic buildings. In order to save the school, Jim and Marie Hogan found Betty Patterson Medlin, a Patterson heir, and reclaimed the land through a purchase agreement, and reopened the School that year under the newly formed non-profit Patterson School Foundation. In 2009, after a century of operation, Patterson ceased to serve as a private school, but the foundation carries on in the spirit of this historic center of education and agriculture.
The Patterson School Community is proud of its heritage and continues the commitment to the land and to society, as those before us. It is with this history in mind, that the Patterson School Foundation paves the way for a new millennia, continuing a 100-year legacy dedicated to education and agriculture. This vision includes growing the Patterson School Incubator Farm Program, and providing an idyllic location for the Western North Carolina Sculpture Center.