Lauchie “Punch” Patterson

Island story

Lauchie “Punch” Patterson grew up in the large Pictou Island family of Charles D. “Charlie Dan” Patterson and Agnes MacCallum Patterson. The 1921 census places Lauchie, age twenty-one, in that family with siblings including Neil “Pinkie” Patterson. By 1931 Lauchie was a household head, with Neil recorded as his brother and a young lodger in the household; the census records Lauchie as a fisherman working on his own account. A historic PIHS group photograph is identified as showing Punch with Eddie Glover and Billy MacMillan Sr., linking him visually to the generation of Islanders who worked the farms and fisheries between the wars. The early-2000s Sutherland Cemetery survey records his memorial as 1900–1973. His delayed birth application, filed in December 1965 by close friend Verna Stewart, records Lauchlin Patterson born on Pictou Island on 1 June 1900 to Charles Patterson, a farmer, and Agnes MacCallum. A certified National Registration search letter supports the same reported date. These are later records of the birth, not a contemporary 1900 certificate. The supporting 1901 census extract reports eight months of age, which conflicts with a June 1900 birth at the April 1901 census. This child’s chronology excludes the older Lauchlin Patterson, born about 1860, in the separate Malcolm and Mary branch.