Frances Mabel (Webb) Patterson 1872-1960
Pioneer of British Columbia, Wife, Mother and Insurance Woman

Frances Mabel (Webb) Patterson’s legacies include Frances Street, named for her in Victoria, British Columbia, and Patterson House, the family home that today sits at 7106-18th Avenue, Burnaby, a designated heritage building.

Frances Mabel Webb was born in Cradley, England on December 5, 1872. She was the eldest of twelve children born to Joseph William and Frances Jane (Yapp) Webb of Ridgeway House. Frances was also the granddaughter of Thomas Webb, the founder of world-renowned Thomas Webb Crystal. Her other grandfather was Richard Yapp, high sheriff of Hereford, England.

Frances crossed the Atlantic on the SS Lake Winnipeg with her family and arrived in Victoria in 1889. Her father had decided to move the family to Victoria so he could accept a landscape design position for Beacon Hill Park with architect John Blair.

On February 7, 1891, Frances Mabel Webb married Dugald Campbell Patterson at St. James Anglican Church, in Victoria, BC, joining two pioneer families. Frances and her husband moved to Burnaby in 1894 where she farmed the family property, looked after her blind mother-in-law, Margaret (Purdon) Patterson, and raised her seven children. As her family continued to grow, she and her husband purchased fourteen acres of land and built a larger home with tennis courts and a gazebo. Here, Frances would hold church teas and host meetings for the women’s division of the Liberal Party. In later years, Frances sold insurance using the lower mainland’s vast streetcar system as a means of transportation, while her husband achieved many firsts in Burnaby and New Westminster. Frances Mabel (Webb) Patterson died in New Westminster on August 30, 1960.

See also: Elva Eleanore (Elliott) Patterson | Charles Bruce Patterson

Link: The Patterson House, Burnaby

Biography by Raymond Reitsma, historian.