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Greenfield’s C.R. Patterson & Sons is regarded as America’s first and only Black-owned and operated automobile company. The Pattersons’ contributions to the transportation industry, their civic efforts, and their successes – especially given the times of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – is something to be celebrated.
Greenfield’s C.R. Patterson & Sons is regarded as America’s first and only Black-owned and operated automobile company. The Pattersons’ contributions to the transportation industry, their civic efforts, and their successes – especially given the times of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – is something to be celebrated.
February 23, 2021
It took some time for buses to catch on in Cincinnati, as track-bound streetcars ruled the roads into the 1920s. But many of Cincinnatiâs earliest buses were manufactured by the Greenfield Bus Body Company, the direct descendant of the C.R. Patterson & Sons Company, which had been founded by a man who escaped slavery.
Fred Patterson stands next to a truck chassis soon to be converted into a passenger bus by the Greenfield Bus Body Company.
Photograph courtesy of Historical Society of Greenfield Ohio
Charles Richard (C.R.) Patterson was born in 1833 into slavery in Virginia. He escaped and made his way north, settling in Highland County, Ohio, located along one of the major thoroughfares of the Underground Railroad. His skills as a blacksmith landed employment at a local carriage company. He launched his own carriage works in 1865 through a partnership with a white investor, James P. Lowe, and the company did a lot of business in Cincinnati.