Some of her neighbors felt less sympathetic toward Mrs. Patterson’s physical struggles. In North Groton, as elsewhere during most of her life, she was a controversial figure. In the first place, people complained that she held herself aloof. In Franklin, too, her extreme “reserve” had been noted by one or two prominent citizens who nevertheless expressed high regard for her.¹⁶ Sarah Turner of North Groton, who thought her “a very spiritual woman,” went on to say: “There was much dignity in her manner. Some folks thought she assumed an air of superiority which made them feel inferior, and consequently disliked her for it.”¹⁷

A more serious cause of misunderstanding may have been the nature of her disease. In the rough and ready life of a remote New Hampshire village at that time there is not likely to have been much comprehension of the tortures of an obscure complaint which left her in a complete state of nervous collapse at one moment and mysteriously recovered at another. “Her invalidism,” Sarah Turner explained, “combined with her extreme nervousness, sometimes repelled the very young people of that day and caused her to be misunderstood by many of the younger set.”¹⁸

One of these told of the time Mrs. Patterson seemed to be dying and he was sent through the bitter night over snow-piled roads to a distant village to get Dr. Patterson. When the two of them returned the next day, exhausted and all but frozen, they found her sitting up,  ● ● ●