Barbour County, West Virginia Biography of JOHN PATSEY This file was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 300-301 JOHN PATSEY. Few native Americans, with education and other advantages, accomplish a better aggregate of sub- stantial results in a comparatively brief lifetime of less than fifty years than John Patsey, a native of Italy, who came to this country with the training only of a practical laborer and was a coal miner until he could put himself into a business of his own. For the past twenty years he has become very well and favorably known in Barbour County, where he is proprietor of a good business at Berry- burg and has a number of other property and financial in- terests scattered over this section of the state. He was born in Central Italy, at Introdacqua, Province of Aquila, sixty-four miles east of Rome, March 21, 1874, son of Ponfila and Magdalena (Juliani) DiPasQuale. He was the third of their six sons. His parents spent all their lives in Italy. Five of the sons came to America. Charles, who after a residence of many years here returned to Italy; James, formerly a merchant in New York City, now a resident of Providence, Rhode Island; Ernest, who was killed while working in the mines at Thomas, West Virginia; and Louis, who died of typhoid fever in Cook's Hospital at Fairmont, West Virginia. John Patsey grew up on a little farm, had to get his education with practically no attendance at school, and at the age of eight years was earning seventeen cents a day at farm labor. He continued to work on the farm until he was thirteen, and then took up railroad work. He did some of the hard labor of railroad construction, including tunnel work, and for nineteen months he was employed during the construction of a tunnel in Belgium. One of liis brothers had preceded, him to America, and his example encouraged John Patsey to come to this country. He sailed from Rotterdam for New York on the ship Rotterdam, landed in New York and immediately came on to Thomas, Tucker County, West Virginia, and did his first work in the mines at Coketon in that vicinity. He reached there October 29, 1898. In his early years Mr. Patsey was accus- tomed to the hardest kind of work, and even in the field of merchandising his success has been due to the habit and training of his earlier years. While at Thomas he made his first start in a mercantile way with limited capital, and after about two years he moved to Harding, but continued his store at Thomas until 1902. He also established a busi- ness at Colton, and for a time owned and operated a store at Lants, on the Coal and Coke Railway. He disposed of these interests to concentrate all his capital and energy upon his new business at Berryburg in Barbour County, where he set up as a merchant in 1903. He established himself here as the successor of H. Cohen, and has been the leading merchant of the locality for nearly twenty years. Aside from his business at Berryburg Mr. Patsey is owner of much real estate, including farm land and im- proved property in town, owns some business property at Philippi, associated with William Janes, and is part owner of a business block at Grafton. He was one of the pro- moters and is a director of the Peoples Bank of Philippi, a stockholder in the Citizens National Bank of the same city, a stockholder in the Monongahela Power and Railway Company of Fairmont, and had financial interest in the Wheeling Investment Association. Mr. Patsey began the naturalization process about seven- teen years ago, and since qualifying as a voter has been a republican, casting his first presidential vote for Colonel Roosevelt. He joined the Odd Fellows Lodge at Philippi. At Newark, New Jersey, November 27, 1909, he married Miss Mary Angeline Zingone, who was born at Deliceto, Province of Foggia, Italy, daughter of Mattio Zingone. She came to America in 1907. Mr. Patsey suffered the tragedy of losing his wife, who was burned to death while starting a fire in a stove with gasoline instead of kerosene, on November 10, 1913. She was only thirty-two years of age when she died. She is survived by two children: Reva, born January 25, 1911, and Mary, born May 25, 1913.