Andrew Paterson was a Covenanter who was transported in 1685 and made his way to Connecticut where he settled and had a family.
Andrew Paterson [or Patterson] was born in 1659 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. He was firm in his Covenanting beliefs and may have been in the Covenanter army at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679.
In 1685, in the light of the expected Argyll Rising, the authorities considered him a threat, brought him under arrest and held him in Glasgow Tolbooth. On 20 May he refused the oath of allegiance to the Crown but though he “remained obstinat” he avoided the formal sentence of banishment unlike some of the others. This did not however, prevent his later transportation.
He was immediately sent to Burntisland to join other Covenanter prisoners and thence to Dunnottar Castle, where he was held until early August. The group was then taken to Leith, arriving on 17 August and soon after placed aboard the Henry and Francis. There he was one of the signatories of the testimony protesting their enforced exile on their refusal to acknowledge the King, not Jesus, as head of the church, “a sworn enemy to religion, an avowed papist whom by our covenants we are bound to withstand and disown”.
Patterson was one of the survivors aboard the Henry and Francis, arriving in Perth Amboy on 7 December 1685.
A life in Connecticut
In early 1686, he walked over 90 miles to Stratford, Connecticut, accompanying Robert McEwen and ten other Covenanters who wished to find somewhere to live with people were sympathetic to their religious beliefs. They were also under threat for forced indenture if they stayed in East Jersey, though this was resolved in favour of the Covenanter transportees in late February 1686.
Four years later, Paterson married Elizabeth Peat [or Peet], granddaughter of an English Puritan emigrant, John Peat from Derby. The Patersons went on to have seven children: Sarah, Charles, William, Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary, and John. In late 1691 he acquired 16 acres on the west side of Stonibrook Hill in Stratford, giving him the status of a town proprietor. His son John was one of the first graduates of Yale College in 1718.
Paterson served as Town Sergeant for a spell, responsible for maintaining public order and carrying out orders of the town’s governing body, including serving warrants, summoning individuals to court, and making arrests. He was also a School Committeeman in 1718, contributing to the oversight of the local school.
In November 1738, along with his sons William and John, by then also town proprietors, he was granted a portion of undivided land in Fairfield.
Andrew Paterson died, aged 87, on 2 December 1746 and was buried in the Old Congregational Burying Place in Stratford.
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Paterson family history
Elisha G Patterson, Andrew Patterson, of Stratford, Conn., and the First Four Generations of His Descendants (privately printed, 1892)