William Paterson

(1817-1899)
New Jersey

frontispiece

S.V.R Paterson & William Paterson, Poems by Twin Graduates of the
College of New Jersey (Newark, New Jersey: Press of Newark Daily Advertiser, 1882)*

William Paterson was born, May 31, 1817, at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, with his twin, Steven von Rensselaer Paterson. The boys' grandfather was William Paterson, who was New Jersey's second U.S. Senator, second governor after the estabishment of the state constitution, and a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the twins were a few months old, their parents moved the faily to Morristown where they lived until the boys were thirteen, and they returned to Perth Amboy. The two brothers entered Princeton College in October, 1832, and graduated in 1835.

Paterson read law in the office of Littleton Kirkpatrick of New Brunswick, son of the Chief Justice, and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1838. He was elected to the state Assembly in 1842 and 1843. In 1847 he became Deputy Director of the Internal Revenue, and again in 1857. In 1882 he was appointed Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey, a position he held for seven years. From 1846 to 1875, he served as Mayor of Perth Amboy.

[Source: Richard Henry Greene, New York Genealogical & Biographical Record 126-127 (New York: Genealogical & Biographical Society, 1899)(vol. 30)] [See also, Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century 722 (Chicago: American Publishers' Assoc., 1898)]

Poetry

S.V.R Paterson & William Paterson, Poems by Twin Graduates of the College of New Jersey (Newark, New Jersey: Press of Newark Daily Advertiser, 1882)

* There are two photographs to be found in Poems by Twin Graduates of the College of New Jersey (Newark, New Jersey: Press of Newark Daily Advertiser, 1882), along with a cryptic introduction. Reading the clues of the introduction, and William Paterson's date of birth, as best I can, I have presented the photograph above as being that of William Paterson.

I assume that the following photograph is that of his twin brother, S.V.R. Paterson:

I might note that the poems in Poems by Twin Graduates of the College of New Jersey are not identified as to which poem were written by each of the twins.