Rosa Pattinson’s Stained Glass Window
As you enter the sanctuary, the left panel of the floral triptych window on your left was likely dedicated in 1913 or soon thereafter in memory of Rosa Monsheimer Pattison, a member who died March 9, 1913, at age 64, during one of Duluth’s historic severe snowstorms. We have been unable to find her obituary in newspaper archives, but know that she was born in New York of German parents, married Charles D. Pattinson in 1869 at age 20; Charles, born in Carlisle, Cumberland, England, came to the United States as a young man. It appears they were married in the East as their presence in Duluth was first recorded in 1891. They had five children, and lived at 3310 Minnesota Avenue.
Charles had a variety of employment, working first in the locomotive shops in Pittsburgh. He stayed with railroading, and came to Minnesota to operate one of the first trains that ran into Duluth from the twin Cities on the Northern Pacific, known then as the St. Paul and Duluth. He was the first yardmaster at the NP’s West End yards. He was a deputy sheriff 1904-’06, and was a gate tender at White City, the amusement park at 39th Street in 1907. As a retired widower he lived in the Metropole Hotel. Charles moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1921 to live with one of their daughters, died in 1922, and is buried alongside Rosa at Park Hill Cemetery. Of their five children, two daughters and a son survived into adulthood, with the two daughters teaching in Duluth’s public schools, and son C. Ray Pattinson, a successful Duluth realtor.
Submitted by Donn Larson
