PATRIOT

Patriot was a post office in the NW 1/4 of the  SW 1/4 of section 22 of Jones Township.  It was established in 1861 as a replacement for the post office of Kings.  No exact location has ever been determined for Kings although it was likely in the same section as Patriot.  Patriot appeared on maps from the 1860s through 1886, although the Patriot Post Office closed in September of 1866.

A June 15, 1864 document found in the National Archives shows the Patriot Post Office to be on the State Road and was signed by Andrew Stithem postmaster.   Stithem was one of the co-founders of the town of West Union and the location of the Patriot Post Office appears to be near the center of the original plat of the town of West Union which was established in 1854.   A May 27, 1866 National Archives document shows Andrew Stithem was still the postmaster.   I found one list that said the post office was run by Horace E. Mintonye, and was southeast of the town of Thayer, but no source was found for that information and I question it’s reliability since we have a written record showing Patriot was southwest not southeast of Thayer.  From other records, I did find that Mintonye enlisted as a soldier in the Civil War and served from November 1863 until January 1865.  He died in 1879 in his buried in Maple Hill Cemetery, Osceola, Iowa, but could find no other record tying him to the Patriot Post Office and, it seems doubtful that he was, since he would have been serving in the Army at the time.  There is a record of an A. P. Mintonye owning six lots in West Union in 1858.