Carlile Pollock Patterson

He studied Civil Engineering at Georgetown College, graduating in 1838, and returned to the Navy, assigned to work with the U.S. Coast Survey.

He graduated from Georgetown College in Kentucky as a civil engineer in 1838, and was attached to the United States Coast Survey from 1838 to 1841.

[4][5][6] Leaving Naval service for the commercial world, he commanded steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, such as the Oregon and the Golden Gate from 1849 to about 1853, primarily running between the west coast of Panama and San Francisco.

[7] When California was made a state by Act of Congress, it was Patterson who brought the news to San Francisco, arriving on October 18, 1850, resulting in city-wide celebrations lasting well into the night.

During the Civil War, the role of the Coast Survey included preparing charts and other material to help United States Navy ships execute the Union blockade of Confederate ports (the strategy known as the "Anaconda Plan").

As a result of these pre-war and wartime connections, the Pattersons were well-known to Grant and other leading Union officers.

Patterson was one of the early members of Washington's Metropolitan Club, which included numerous Union generals, admirals, and other officers.

A large oil portrait of Patterson's brother-in-law, David Dixon Porter, hangs in the first-floor lobby (as of 2007).

Another sister, George Ann, and her husband David Dixon Porter were interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

President Chester A. Arthur neither signed nor vetoed the bill, but held it ten days and allowed it to become law without his signature.

In a message dated June 21, 1884, the President explained "I do not question the constitutional right of Congress to pass a law relieving the family of an officer, in view of the services he had rendered his country, from the burdens of taxation, but I submit to Congress that this just gift of the nation to the family of such faithful officer should come from the National Treasury rather than from that of this District, and I therefore recommend that an appropriation be made to reimburse the District for the amount of taxes which would have been due to it had this act not become a law."

"Carlile Patterson, The great captain of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1874-1881", John Cloud, NOAA 49 pp.