This information is from: http://orbitist.com/2014/07/07/anti-slavery-activists-in-the-1800s/
By Douglas H. Shepard
This location is Private property.
Samuel Patch (born in 1791) is the most likely candidate to have been the person referred to as “Patch” in an anecdote inThe story has to do with Pettit’s old friend William Cooper (1793 – 1872), who had been the supervisor of the Town of Perrysburg in Cattaraugus County NY. Cooper had been reelected several times by the local Democratic Party. However, after hearing Samuel R. Ward describe his sufferings in slavery, Cooper decided that slavery must be abolished and that neither the Democrats nor the Whigs really differed on the matter.
Pettit said that although Cooper did vote as usual in the next election, he came to a determination that that was the last time he would vote for a slaveholder for President. Cooper said as much to his “neighbor and fellow Democrat,” Patch, who agreed but wondered what the alternative was. Cooper’s solution was to support the new Birney Party which upheld “the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” Pettit wrote that although both men had “seen some service [to the Underground Railroad] before,” both “became zealous agents.”
Patch was born in Vermont, and according to the 1855 census, he had moved to Perrysburg by 1841. He worked as a blacksmith, and on the 1856 Perrysburg map, the Patch shop may be seen a short distance from the Cooper hotel. The 1855 census lists Patch (age 64) with his wife Mary (60), sons Samuel O. Patch (30) and Ephraim L. Patch (19), daughter-in-law Mary (23), and granddaughter Florence A. Cooper (6). They were living very close to the William Cooper family. By 1860 the family has relocated to Fond du Lac WI, where Samuel and Mary Patch were living in the household of their son, Samuel O. Patch and his wife, Mary. They were all still there in 1870.
Source: Eber Pettit’s Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad