HAMILTON — Joanne Holbrook Patton, who married into the famous Patton military family and went on to develop her own reputation for community service and philanthropy, died on Sunday, Sept. 24. She was 92.
Holbrook Patton’s death was announced on Friday by the Wenham Museum in a message to its members. The museum oversees the Patton Family Archives.
“Joanne Patton was a person of uncommon grace, generosity, and wisdom,” the museum said in the message. ” … She connected with and enriched every community she encountered, including our wonderful North Shore.”
Holbrook Patton was married to Maj. Gen. George S. Patton IV and was the daughter-in-law of Gen. George S. Patton Jr., the famous the World War II general. She and her husband moved into the Patton Homestead on Asbury Street in Hamilton in 1980, where they continued to raise their five children and established a community supported agriculture project at Green Meadows Farm.
While Patton played the role of supportive military wife, she also ran her own business as a consultant to nonprofit organizations and immersed herself in volunteer work and community service, including serving as director of the Hamilton-Wenham Community Center.
In 2013, she and the Patton family were awarded the Essex Heritage Hero Award by the Essex National Heritage Commission for their involvement with numerous nonprofit and service organizations, both locally and across the globe.
“Name a nonprofit on the North Shore and Joanne Patton has almost certainly played an important role,” Essex Heritage said in awarding her the honor.
Holbrook Patton was part of a military family even before she married Patton IV in 1952 in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Her father, Brig. Gen. Willard Holbrook, was a World War II general, and her grandfathers were both Calvary officers.
In a story in The Salem News in 1998, Holbrook Patton said she was not intimidated by joining the renowned Patton family, noting that her father-in-law had served under both of her grandfathers.
“My grandfathers could speak of my husband’s father as ‘that young whippersnapper,'” she said. “I wasn’t in awe.”
Still, the Patton name carried its burdens. As a young wife, tired of the constant questions, she at one point denied being related to the famous general, who died in 1945. But she soon learned to accept and even welcome stories about the father-in-law she’d never met.
“My own personal poll shows that more people like to brag about being chewed out by General Patton than being decorated by him,” she said in the 1998 story. “But in all cases, they were inspired to feel they had been touched by history.”
When her husband retired from the military in 1980, he and Holbrook Patton moved to the Patton Homestead in Hamilton, a historic 27-acre property on the Ipswich River that had been in the family since 1928.
Holbrook Patton continued to live in the Homestead after her husband died in 2004. She donated the property to the town of Hamilton in 2012, and transferred ownership of the Patton Family Archives to the Wenham Museum in 2019. The collection, which includes personal family items and other memorabilia, is displayed in four rooms at the Patton Homestead and is open to the public via guided tours.
Kristin Noon, executive director of the Wenham Museum, called Holbrook a “very special person.”
“She truly was tremendously generous and thoughtful and always answered the call to serve,” Noon said. “She worked tremendously hard to support the communities where she was involved.”
In 2019, the Patton family sold Green Meadows Farm and the adjacent Vineyard Hills to Essex County Greenbelt, a land conservation trust. The farm is now called Iron Ox Farm.
Noon said Holbrook Patton had recently moved to Connecticut to be closer to her family. She said the Patton family will announce memorial arrangements at a later date.
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