Born on February 12, 1891, in Glens Falls, New York,[1] the son of Lodice Edna (née Porter) and Charles Robert Patterson,[citation needed] Patterson received an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1912 from Union College and a Bachelor of Laws in 1915 from Harvard Law School.

[1] Patterson was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 9, 1939, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated by Judge Martin Thomas Manton.

[4] Patterson advocated unifying the armed services (army and navy) and having a single chief of staff.

[7] While sympathetic to black grievances, aspirations, and recommendations he was concerned that radical change would impede military preparedness during war.

[1] After declining an offer by President Truman to be reappointed to his former judgeship,[citation needed] Patterson returned to private practice in New York City from 1947 to 1952.

[10] Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed Patterson along with New York City’s construction coordinator Robert Moses and former Justice Charles C. Lockwood as a member of the Temporary Long Island Railroad Commission, installed after the Richmond Hill train crash on November 22, 1950, that claimed 79 lives.

[11] The Commission recommended the state purchase and operation by non-profit public authority of the railway service.

)[14] Patterson died on January 22, 1952,[1] returning from meeting a client, onboard American Airlines Flight 6780 which crashed on the approach to Newark Airport in Elizabeth, New Jersey; he was age 60.

[citation needed] In 2014, the University of Tennessee Press published his previously unpublished 1947 memoir Arming the Nation for War, with a foreword by Robert M. Morgenthau, former Manhattan district attorney, and edited by Brian Waddell, associate professor at the University of Connecticut.