[5] His father or brother Robert Patton Jr. represented Spotsylvania County in the Virginia House of Delegates during the 1820-1821 session.

Patton married the former Margaret ("Peggy") French, daughter of a local family of planters and lawyers.

[7] Patton began his legal practice in Fredericksburg and also enslaved people at his plantation in nearby Spotsylvania County.

[Robert Patton enslaved 8 people, of whom only 2 were children in Culpeper County west of Spotsylvania in 1850][12] Meanwhile, voters in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania area elected Patton as a Jacksonian and Democrat to the United States House of Representatives initially to fill a vacancy in 1830, but he won re-election twice and served until 1838.

Patton returned to his private legal practice in Richmond, including work on a revision of the Code of Virginia, which he and Conway Robinson published in 1849.