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BARBOUR COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
November 8, 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 300-301
Barbour
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.
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