Who hid Patton papers in historic house 100 years ago?

ASHEVILLE -  The Patton-Parker House has stood at Charlotte and Chestnut streets since 1868, home to seven generations of one of Asheville's leading families.

Little did attorney Jim Siemens know that when he bought the landmark last fall, the house still held secrets from 100 years ago.

Last month, electrician German Martinez was running wire to a back room, working in a doorway beside a hearth. He took down a patch of drywall, revealing an older layer of plaster and wood lathing. As he cut away, he uncovered a secret compartment hidden next to the chimney. Looking inside, he caught a glimpse of color. He pulled out a tin box embossed with Caribbean scenes and a stack of leather-bound books covered with ash.

“I’ve worked in a lot of old houses, but I’ve never found anything like this,” the electrician said.

Inside the box was a treasure trove of business correspondence and papers of Thomas W. Patton, the house’s original builder and the Asheville city father who lent his name to one of the city’s major thoroughfares.

For the past month, Siemens and his girlfriend, Deborah Haft, have been meticulously poring over the cache of historic documents, which include signatures from two U.S. presidents.

A land grant shows property in Alabama signed over to Patton by Andrew Jackson in November 1830, likely for land wrested from Native Americans under the Indian Removal Act signed that same year.

Another land grant for Alabama property is signed by Martin Van Buren in 1837.

A mysterious log kept by a sailor may have belonged to one of Patton’s uncles, Siemens speculated. The journal covers a year at sea from 1799 to 1800 aboard the USS Patapsco. Flipping through the pages filled with elegant handwriting, Siemens can see where the sailor was teaching himself trigonometry.

They also found leather-bound ledgers from the Asheville Club, an exclusive social organization of the East Coast’s wealthiest men, with signatures of notables checking into the club headquarters where the Miles Building now stands on Haywood Street in downtown Asheville.

Scorecards from billiards tournaments at the club show that players were gambling $5 a game around 1900, which is estimated at more than $100 in today’s dollars.

There’s even a court summons in some legal dispute against Thomas Patton and his partner Nicholas Woodfin, who developed the town who bears his name.

What seems out of place are the textbooks, published up until 1912, and belonging to Haywood Parker Jr., Patton’s grandson. Patton died in 1907, which means he didn’t place the books in the ceiling.

Who was Patton?

Patton, a Civil War hero who rose to the rank of captain in the Confederate Army, came home to Asheville and built the sprawling family home with the help of three black carpenters from 1868-69.

During the war, the property had been part of Camp Patton, a military base used by Confederate and Union troops.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and part of the Chestnut Hill Historic District, the house has seen plenty of history, not hidden away in the walls.

Patton served as Asheville mayor, Buncombe County commissioner and county tax collector. Some of the paperwork shows his efforts in trying to bring electricity to parts of the city and county. He returned to military service as a volunteer officer during the Spanish-American war, which may explain the Caribbean origin of the tin box, Siemens speculates.

Patton also hosted a group of civic-minded women in November 1894 in support of women’s right to vote. The meeting launched the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association and the campaign for voting rights for both sexes. His descendant, Mary Toole Parker, helped make Asheville’s YWCA the first integrated chapter in the South.

Who hid the papers?

The mystery remains who may have stashed some of Patton’s correspondence along with textbooks belonging to grandson Haywood Parker Jr. into the secret compartment, to be forgotten for almost 100 years.

Jeff Poe, the general contractor for the renovation, offers some clues to the age of the secret cache, which may have been covered up in later additions to the back of the house.

The original wood lathing was hewn by hand, apparently by the three black carpenters, former slaves, who built the house at Patton’s direction. The wood lathing that covered the secret compartment was machined, pointing to perhaps the 1920s, Poe estimates.

Poe’s guess is that the papers and books were stashed and forgotten in the ceiling, which was covered over by drywall with later remodelings.

Siemens has notified experts at Buncombe County’s Pack Library, which has some of Patton’s papers. Others are collected at UNC Chapel Hill, where Patton graduated.

“I haven’t seen anything nefarious. But as a lawyer, it’s interesting for me to see how involved these guys were in the land transactions around Asheville.”

Does the house hold more secrets behind its plaster walls and floor spaces?

“I’ve thought about that,” Poe said. But, so far, workmen have discovered nothing else behind the walls.

The construction is on schedule at the house, which will be converted for Siemens’ family law practice, moving in this fall.

“It’s been fun,” Siemens said of the renovation and the house's secrets revealed so far. “You take on a responsibility when you take on a historic house.”