Neill Thomas Patterson was born April 14, 1878, in Harnett County, North Carolina. He was president of the Bank of Coats. In the turmoil of a faltering economy just after World War I, a state bank examiner shut the bank's doors. The development sent Patterson into despondency, and on Monday, December 6, 1920, he died by suicide. He was forty-two years old and left a wife and seven children.