The Patterson family that lived just outside of Madisonville, Tx. in a little community known as Cottonwood woke up one day to find their husband and father gone never to return. There are suggestions that he was murdered for gambling debts and also that he went to fight in whatever war was going on in 1895. My grandmother who was born in 1890 recalls that she was 5 years old when he left. He would have been 42 y/o. He left his wife with several small children at home. She also remembers that her mother told her on her death bed that if "Paddy" ever returned they were tell him that she still loved him. Does anyone have a clue as to what might have happened. Was this kind of thing common in the 1890's? Jamie Gregg Smith