● ● ●  student; but several respected Franklin citizens who knew them both denied that they had any acquaintance with each other during the years she lived in Franklin.²

The most important fact of these years was Dr. Patterson’s refusal to allow George Glover to be brought back to live with them. Evidently he was convinced that the boy would be too great a burden on Mrs. Patterson’s health, and this attitude in turn may have contributed to the deterioration of her health. The year after their marriage, Patterson sold his horse and bought a cow, which meant that he was giving up his periodic dental jaunts through the countryside and settling down to greater domesticity; but there was still no home with them for George.

The urgency of her pleas to be reunited with the boy can be measured by the fact that in April, 1855, they moved to North Groton to be near him. This lonely village in the foothills of the White Mountains was a far from ideal spot for Patterson to carry on his dental practice. A niece of Mahala and Russell Cheney, Mrs. Sarah C. Turner, who described George as having been placed in the care of her uncle and aunt by Mark Baker, went on to say, “In making the effort to be with her boy by coming to Groton, Mrs. Patterson ultimately sacrificed her husband’s profession for a time at least, there not being support enough for a dentist in that little place.”³

However, he managed to acquire a timber lot of one hundred acres on the mountain two miles away and, nearer the village, the four acres on which his house and a small sawmill stood, augmented later  ● ● ●