Charles L. Patten

Charles Lee Patten was born on September 21, 1841, in Prospect, Ohio.¹ He went by Charlie and eventually “Uncle Charlie.” In 1862, he enlisted in the Union Army and served during the Civil War as a corporal. He served alongside Warren G. Harding’s father, George Tryon Harding, and watched young Warren Harding “grow to manhood.”² After the war, Patten married a woman named Elizabeth C. Blair on May 23, 1867. They had three children.³ Patten spent the majority of his life living in Marion, Ohio and records indicate he served as a postmaster there between at least 1887 and 1903.⁴

 
Due to his longstanding relationship with the Harding family, at some point he started managing the Hardings’ grounds at their home in Marion. During Warren Harding’s 1920 presidential run, “Uncle Charlie” became well known by members of the campaign and the press. In particular, he was known as the “official stoker of the press shack stove.”⁵ When Harding won the election, he found a note written by Charlie titled, “‘Uncle’ Charlie’s Cabinet,” recording his personal picks for who should fill cabinet positions. President-elect Harding joked, “Well, Charlie, I congratulate you, for you have gotten further with it than I have.”⁶

Patten soon followed Harding to the White House and began working as a gardener in spring 1921, reporting directly to First Lady Florence Harding. After President Harding’s death in 1923, a distraught Patten spoke to the press while sobbing, “I’m ready to leave now too…Mrs. Harding will be going now and my heart has gone with the President…His kind heart generated fellowship and he certainly had ability. He is as great an example as Abraham Lincoln. Warren G. Harding was a martyr to the presidency.”⁷ In November 1924, Patten resigned from his position at the White House and fulfilled a promise to his granddaughter to return to Marion. Upon his departure, President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge gave him an engraved plaque signed by the entire White House staff along with the police force and those that worked in the Executive Offices.⁸

Patten died on April 13, 1926, and was buried at Marion Cemetery in Marion, Ohio.⁹