C. R. Patterson & Sons, the First Black-Owned Automobile Manufacturers
Charles Richard (C. R.) Patterson was born in 1833 in Virginia. Accounts differ as to whether his family was enslaved or free. In 1840, he and his parents and three of his brothers escaped or traveled to Greenfield, Ohio, a stop on the Underground Railroad. According to Patterson family lore, the family swam across the Ohio River. C. R. would have been 7 or