Mary Kate Patterson

Mary Kate Patterson. Confederate Spy. , West of the Nashville Turnpike stands the home of Mary Kate Patterson, a Confederate spy. She assisted Capt. Henry B. Shaw's Coleman's Scouts, a Confederate cavalry unit and spy network that served the Army of Tennessee, from 1862 to 1865. She befriended Federals and obtained passes to Nashville, where she secured supplies and messages to smuggle to the Scouts in her buggy's false bottom. Her brother, Everard Patterson, also served in the Scouts. Her family sheltered and fed Confederate soldiers, signaling them by an arrangement of louvers and lanterns in the windows when it was safe to come in for medical help and hot meals., Patterson's most famous mission came in November 1863, when her neighbor Sam Davis, one of the youngest Scouts, asked her and her cousin Robbie Woodruff to get a list of items in Nashville for Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. She later recalled her last meeting with Davis: "We found him up, looking as bright as if he had slept all night, and, oh, he did enjoy his good warm breakfast, for we rode fast and had his coffee in a jug to keep it warm. ... Two of my little brothers brought our dinner and we spent a nice, pleasant Sunday together, the last he spent on earth but one.", Federal troops in Giles County captured Davis and soon executed him for spying. Patterson traveled to Pulaski to identify the body. She married Davis's half-brother, John Davis, also a Scout, in 1864. She lived in La Vergne for most of her life, and at her death in 1931, she became the first woman buried in the Confederate Circle in Nashville's Mt. Olivet Cemetery., (captions) , Mary Kate Patterson Courtesy Confederate Veteran magazine , Sam and John Davis - Courtesy Sam Davis Memorial Association , Confederate Circle, Mt. Olivet Cemetery Courtesy Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area , Patterson gravestone Courtesy Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area