Patch family historical marker installed on APSU campus

For Elisabeth Patch Lyman, continuing her family's legacy via an historic project that will forever be embedded on Austin Peay State University's campus is priceless.

Patch Lyman is the daughter of late Rubye Patch, a local leader known for her passion about Clarksville history.

Patch died on Aug. 14, 2019, while she was working to get an historical marker approved and placed on APSU's campus honoring her great grandfather, Asahel Huntington Patch, who invented the corn sheller.

Patch Lyman continued her mother's project and was able to get the marker approved and installed Sept. 3 at the intersection of College Street and Home Avenue.

One side of the marker tells about the Patch's history, and the Black Hawk corn sheller invention. The other side features an engraved history of the Patch Foundry, which was located where APSU's campus is today.

In 1850, the foundry was known for specializing in iron stoves and grates — later diversifying into copper pipes, kettles, sheet iron and machine castings of all descriptions, according to its website.

Back then, the Patch's antebellum home was also located where APSU is now.

In the 1980's, it was turned into a fraternity house and had later fallen into disrepair, according to Patch Lyman. Her mother had tried to save it, but her efforts were unsuccessful.

So, Patch decided she wanted a marker placed near the home and foundry's locations. She wrote the dialogue on both sides of the marker, and it was approved by APSU two days before her death.

Afterwards, her text and proposal were submitted to the Tennessee Historical Commission. They were approved on Oct. 18, 2019, according to Patch Lyman, who said it would have meant the world to her if her mother had seen the marker go up.

"I think she would be the most proud person ever... she would have wanted a ceremony and champagne," she laughed. "That's how proud she was."

Patch Lyman said her mother had taught her so much about volunteerism and giving back to the community, and she knew the project was something she had to continue.

"I think that she worked so hard for Clarksville because she loved the city so much. She loved living in the city… the people and the history," Patch Lyman said.

"She loved that she could give so much of her time... energy and effort to the betterment of Clarksville and history meant so much to her, and I think that she would be so proud of the legacy she left, especially with this marker because she wrote it."

Patch Lyman wasn't present when the marker was installed, but when she saw a photo of it, she was in tears.

"The wording and the verbiage... when I read it, I heard her voice," she said. "To see it being up and to see her last project come to fruition just means the world to me and my family."

Tom Hutchins, executive director of APSU's Physical Plant, helped Patch as she tried to get the marker installed.

Although he didn't know Patch personally, Hutchins felt the marker would be an appropriate way to remember the history of land.

"It's important for us to remember," Hutchins said. "There's a rich history around some of the property the campus occupies now."

Hutchins said there are several markers around campus that commemorate historic properties, and he is glad to know the Patch history is now a part of that.

"It's always interesting for me to talk with people that have some of the history of areas that are a part of the APSU campus now and just to learn a little more about what the areas surrounding us years ago and where we came from," he said.

At age 65, A.H Patch created the hand-operated corn sheller in 1885 with a kitchen table as a workbench and a pocket knife as his only tool, according to the Historic Clarksville book. Patch worked on wooden patterns and glued the parts together with beeswax. He had his first sale that same year and was introduced to the world on a popular scale in 1886, the book said

The Black Hawk corn sheller won two World's Fair bronze plaques at Chicago in 1893. It won a third at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the book states.

The Patch Foundry made and shipped an estimated 1 million Black Hawk corn shellers world-wide from 1885-1955.

Though Patch died in 1909 at age 84, his invention lived on for another 50-plus years after the Clarksville foundry purchased the pattern.

Alexis Clark can be reached at 931-217-8519 or [email protected].