In February 1906, residents gathered to decide, once and for all, whether or not to incorporate. 120 votes were cast and the measure was approved nearly 2 to 1. The City of Glendale came into existence with the election of officers, including a board of trustees. A young man named Orron E. Patterson was selected as Marshal of Police and Fire. Patterson was the son of prominent residents Benjamin and Mary Patterson. Parcher lists them as one of the ‘first three permanent American families’ to settle in Glendale.

Benjamin and Mary Patterson

Born in Ohio in 1845, Benjamin Patterson relocated to Iowa as a youth. When he was sixteen, he enlisted in the Twentieth Iowa Infantry and was on the firing line for much of the Civil War. On Christmas Eve, 1868, in Muscatine County, Iowa, he married New Jersey native Mary Keen. They farmed in Iowa and had one son, Orron, born on March 11, 1876, and two daughters Olive, born in 1872 and Mary, born in 1880, by the time they headed west in 1882. 

Shortly after their arrival, Patterson purchased 52 acres and began constructing a two-story Colonial-style house at Third and Dayton Court (now Everett) for his family. Two more daughters were born, Jessie in 1884 and Bertha in 1886. Patterson soon met fellow newcomer, Ellis Byram. They teamed up with George Phelon to purchase about 120 acres, (on the east side of what would later be Glendale Avenue), in the Childs Tract. They sub-divided the property into ten-acre tracts and sold them. 

Parcher wrote that these three men, Patterson, Byram and Phelon, sought to improve their fledging community. “By 1883, thirteen families were comfortably settled among the fruit trees of the onetime orchards which were subdivided and platted in what is now downtown Glendale. In November of that year, those pioneering Glendalians met at the home of Everett Chase to celebrate the traditional Thanksgiving Day. The dinner was served outdoors, on long tables under the pepper trees, and present, aside from the hosts, were the Pattersons, Byrams, Phelons, Ross, Lindgrens, Fowles, Bissetts, Larkins, Colemans, Fords, Rivers and Crows.” Parcher added that the first three families he named constituted the first permanent American settlers in this part of Glendale.

Patterson joined the Glendale Improvement Association, was involved in establishing a bank and a water company and also, along with several other projects, supported the construction of the Victorian-style Glendale Hotel.  

The Patterson and Byram families were also active in the Presbyterian Church. As the community grew, the center of town shifted north, and, as church historian Darlene E. McClain noted, the church was soon “stranded on the outskirts.” The congregation decided to move their building to two lots at Fourth (now Broadway) and C (now Cedar), donated by Patterson and Byram. Although the lots were a gift, it cost the church $100 to clear the cactus. Mary Patterson was active in the church and also in philanthropy work, joining the N.P. Banks Relief Corps of the GAR, Grand Army of the Republic.

Patterson’s Memories of Early Glendale

In his later years, Patterson enjoyed reminiscing with other pioneers at the ‘Old Timers’ gatherings. When he arrived in 1882, the land was “covered with live oak and sycamores, with several one-room shacks and only a few substantial houses.” There were no citrus orchards here then, he said. He spoke of the severe weather of 1879, three years before he and his family settled here. On the night of December 28, a sudden cold snap froze most of the young trees and they did not survive.

 Patterson soon had productive crops on ten of his acres, bounded by Glendale, Harvard, Belmont and Broadway. Previously, this land had held Muscat grapes, but they had become diseased. Patterson “grubbed up the vines” and planted potatoes. In 1896, he sold 300 sacks of “fine” potatoes for 20 cents each, earning $60. Later, he planted orange trees. But, eventually, those trees gave way to a bank and to the stores, offices and houses that became the village of Glendale. 

Mary’s Cactus Garden

Mary began propagating the cactus which had once covered the area. She planted them in her large yard and it became a local showplace. She later shipped cacti everywhere in the country and mailed an annual catalogue to her customers. 

Patterson Was Civic Booster

Patterson was one of the six men who filed the plat for the new town of Glendale. And, as a member of the Glendale Improvement group, he no doubt supported incorporation.

Glendale’s first Marshal

In February 1906, the City of Glendale came into existence and Orron E. Patterson took office as marshal. According to Captain Mike Post, retired from the Glendale Police Department and author of “Pictorial History, Glendale Police Department 1851-1990,” the police and fire departments were one unit and Patterson oversaw them both, receiving a salary of $10 a month. He quickly organized the unit, comprised of both hired and volunteer help. The fire equipment was housed in an open shed on Howard Street, 150 feet north of Broadway, for the first years after incorporation. The original jail was an iron cage located at the rear of the fire station.

First Crime Wave

Post wrote that Glendale's first crime wave involved fruit thieves, “a fitting story for a community that was primarily agricultural in its beginnings. In August of 1906, a team of fruit thieves was terrorizing the local populace when a certain Mrs. Irving flushed them from her peach orchard with a shotgun blast. A front-page editorial of the Glendale News expressed the hope ‘that some party may get a better aim at these thieves and succeed in filling their hides full of lead.’ "

First Major Felony

The first major felony occurred that December, when registered mail was stolen from the Glendale Post Office, located in the Fraley cash grocery store building at Glendale and Wilson.

The burglars stole a horse and buggy for their get-away. According to historian Post, this case tested the new marshal beyond his resources and the county sheriff was called in to investigate. (However, no record of a successful case clearance exists, Post added.) 

Post reflected that Patterson’s career was “neither illustrious nor long.” In April 19, 1908, a new marshal, Harry Miller, was sworn in, having defeated Patterson in a municipal election. (The ballot count was 214 to 130.)

Mary Patterson Passes Away

When Mary Keen Patterson died in 1908 at age 60, the church was filled with flowers, placed there by fellow members of the NP Banks Relief Corps. The pews were filled as the Tropico Quartet sang “Sweet Hour of Prayer” and a large procession followed the hearse on unpaved San Fernando Road to a newly opened cemetery in Tropico. (The cemetery, now Forest Lawn, opened in 1906 on land that had previously belonged to Susan Glassell Mitchell, daughter of lawyer and property owner Andrew Glassell.) 

According to Patterson family history and several newspaper accounts, Mary Patterson’s cacti became the basis of the Cactus Gardens at the Huntington in San Marino. Mary’s granddaughter, Ethel Nelson Last, (daughter of Olive Patterson Nelson and Lawrence Nelson), confirmed this many years later, saying that her grandfather contacted Henry Huntington and presented him with the collection. 

According to the Huntington website, in 1907, the superintendent of grounds, William Hertrich, suggested planting a cactus garden on the rocky slope that bordered the drive leading to Huntington’s newly planned residence. The Desert Garden is now considered “one of the world's largest and oldest collections of cacti, succulents and other desert plants, collected from throughout the world. It brought together a group of plants largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s.” 

Benjamin F. Patterson died in 1920 at age 74 and is buried alongside Mary at Forest Lawn.

Tessa Bullis

Tessa, aka Tessie, married Jessie Stine in 1888.

Bullis Family Buried at Grand View

Henrietta Payne Bullis died in 1910 and P.H. Bullis died in 1921 at age 80. They are buried at Grand View Memorial Park, along with Louise Peck Patterson Bullis, who died in 1923 at age 43.

James A. Bullis

The youngest son, James Allen Bullis, was listed as living at 111 East Maple in his father’s 1921 obituary. 

He may be the man standing with H.H. Easton, proprietor of Glendale Transfer Company at 328 South Glendale Avenue in this photo from the Glendale Pictorial History.

Orron Passes Away

Orron Eldon Patterson died on January 11, 1943 at his home on 1216 Thompson. He was married to Martha F. Patterson and was age 66. According to his obituary, he had been an employee of the City of Glendale for a ‘number of years.’ Funeral services were held at L.G. Scovern’s Chapel of Sacred Memories. As he was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, members of the veterans’ camp of Glendale took part in the service. He was survived by his widow, Mrs. Martha F. Patterson, his daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Talbott and a stepdaughter, Pearl M. Siple, both of Glendale, and his son Donald Patterson of Sky Forest. Four sisters survived him, Mrs. Jessie Weir of Berkeley, Mrs. Bertha Hezmalhalch of Santa Rosa, Mable [possibly Mary] Patterson of Pasadena, and Mrs. Olive Nelson of Glendale. He was buried at Forest Lawn.

City Directories

The Glendale History Room, in the Glendale Public Library on Harvard Street, has several early city directories. The earliest directory on file is from 1908. 

1908

• P.H. Bullis and wife; and Allen, 427 E Street

• B.F. Patterson; Miss Jessie and Miss Mabel, 336 E Street

• O.E. Patterson and wife, 313 B Street 

1919

• Allen Bullis, son of Philip, mason, 427 Everett

• Philip Bullis, investments 477 Everett

• W.H. Bullis, wife Lulla M., plaster contractor, 103 N. Central, Tropico

• B.F. Patterson 321 Everett, Glendale

Patterson Street and Park

In 1922, the city purchased ten acres at Patterson and Kenilworth Avenues in West Glendale from John R. Gray for $10,000 and named it Patterson Park. A wading pool was built for children, while adults swam in a plunge. It was one of Glendale’s first parks. Patterson Avenue runs alongside the south side of the park, which has since become Fremont Park. It is undergoing renovation.