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CHARLES A. PATTERSON
Vol. 3, p. 972

The Patterson Newspaper Subscription Agency, of which the president
is he whose name initiates this paragraph, has its headquarters in
Oklahoma City and in its scope of business and efficiency of service
is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the entire
West. As a business man Mr. Patterson is essentially progressive and
alert and his experience has been wide and varied, including
prominent association for a number of years with the management of
theatrical enterprises. In his present line of enterprise his mature
judgment and familiarity with all details make him a specially
resourceful executive, and he is consistently to be designated as one
of the representative figures in the business circles of the Oklahoma
metropolis, the while he stands also as a loyal and public-spirited
citizen.

Charles Alexander Patterson was born in Neosho Rapids, Lyon County,
Kansas, on the 11th of December 1868, and is a scion of one of the
sterling pioneer families of the Sunflower State. He is a son of
Ephraim A. and Margaret Ann (BARNETT) Patterson, the former a native
of Kentucky and the latter of Missouri. When Charles A. Patterson was
a lad of five years his parents removed from his native town to the
City of Fort Scott, Kansas, and there he continued to attend the
public schools until his graduation in the high school. When a mere
boy he was connected with active service for the daily newspapers of
Fort Scott, and it may be that it was thus he gained early
predilection for the line of enterprise in which he has achieved such
distinctive success in later years. In the practical supplementing of
his education Mr. Patterson completed a thorough course in the Topeka
Business College, in the capital city of Kansas, and he then assumed
a clerical position in the general offices of the Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe Railroad.

From Topeka he finally went to Kansas City, Missouri, where he
became actively and prominently identified with newspaper work and
where he eventually figured as one of the founders of the Kansas City
Post of which he was circulation manager from the time of the issuing
of the first edition. Later he became associated with others in the
founding of the Daily Star at St. Joseph, Missouri, and with this
paper he held the position of circulation manager until the property
and business were sold by the original owners.

At the age of twenty-one years Mr. Patterson identified himself also
with the theatrical business, as a booking agent and as the lessee of
opera houses and theaters throughout Kansas and Oklahoma. With this
interesting line of business he continued to be associated for
nineteen years, and within this period he figured as the lessee and
manager of twenty-six theaters in Kansas and Oklahoma, including the
Auditorium Theater at Wichita, Kansas, in which building he
maintained his general office.

In 1899 he was manager of the opera houses at Shawnee and Anadarko,
Oklahoma and one at Amarillo, Texas. Shortly after the disaster by
fire that caused the loss of so many lives in the Iroquois Theater in
the City of Chicago, Mr. Patterson sold his entire holdings and
agencies in the theatrical business to H. G. TOLER & Son, of Wichita,
Kansas, and since that time he has had no further association with
this line of enterprise.

Returning to Kansas City, Mr. Patterson there became circulation
manager for one f the leading daily papers, but soon afterward, in
1908, he came to the newly created State of Oklahoma, where, with
general offices in Oklahoma City he has built up a general newspaper
subscription agency that is equal to anything of similar order in the
entire Union. From his agency, through the medium of his traveling
representatives, he effectively covers the states of Iowa, Nebraska,
Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma and in the connection he gives
steady and remunerative employment to an average of twenty-five
persons, his policy being at all times to secure the best possible
talent in all departments of his business and to make the
remuneration justify the results obtained. Concerning him the
following pertinent and well merited statements has been written: "As
manager of men in the field Mr. Patterson has no superior and from
the hundred whom he tries out he selects and keeps the best. So
successful has he become in the selecting and handling of men that he
has been paid the high compliment of being called to the large cities
of the East by newspaper circulation and business managers who were
anxious to learn from him personally his methods and plans of work.
In all of his endeavors Mr. Patterson has been successful also in a
financial way because he wrought on the theory that 'you can do it if
you try' and will to your efforts a system carefully planned from the
standpoint of knowledge of wheat you are striving to achieve and will
demand efficiency in the means employed. During the period of his
circulation building from Oklahoma City offices Mr. Patterson has
taken direct subscriptions to an aggregate number of fully 500,000."

Mr. Patterson is an active and popular member of the International
Circulation Managers' Association, of which the president is A.
MCKINNON, of the New York World. This association embraces a
membership of more than 300 representatives of the leading daily
newspapers of the United States.

At El Reno, Oklahoma, on the 20th of August 1895, Mr. Patterson
wedded Miss Hattie RAINES, daughter of John B. and Jane Raines and
two children of this union are: Harold born October 20, 1902, and
Isabelle, born December 10, 1905. The family home in Oklahoma City is
at 1714 East Ninth Street, and the business offices of Mr. Patterson
are in the Baltimore Building.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Marti Graham, August 1999.