02/11/2026
The regular monthly meeting of FCGS will be Monday night, February 16 at 7 p.m. in the Wayne Bryan Meeting Hall, 108 E. Main St. Mt. Vernon, Texas. The guest speaker will be Mr. Patrick Chase of Sulphur Springs, Texas. A bio of Mr. Chase and his topic of presentation are attached. The public is invited to attend.
Pat Chase was raised in Knightstown, Indiana, which is located on the historic National Road. The town was named for Jonathan Knight in 1827, who was instrumental in the early civil engineering of the National Road and was the first Chief Civil Engineer for the B&O Railroad.
Chase has degree in history from Louisiana State University Baton Rouge and a degree in education from Southeastern Louisiana University. In addition to his careers in education and business, he has been a lifelong farmer and has been a breeder/trainer of Belgian draft horses. His love of horse transportation has furthered his understanding of the early transportation routes of American history. He has spent the last six years researching the life of Jonathan Knight and has rediscovered Knight’s substantial contribution to the development of the earliest days of the National Road and B&O Railroad. Chase has recently written the biography Jonathan Knight – Pathfinder of American Roads and the book is now available on Amazon. In addition to Chase’s work on the Knight book he has published numerous articles and has lectured extensively on the histories of Indiana, Texas, Michigan, agriculture, sports and equine development.
Chase is very involved with Historic Knightstown Inc., the history museum that is located on the square in Knightstown in an historic 1895 building that is owned by Chase and his business partner.
He and his wife Patricia Cade Chase reside in Sulphur Springs, Texas and Bay View, Michigan. They have three daughters, Menzie, Carrie and Molly.
Jonathan Knight 1787-1858 was an American that had a substantial influence in the development of Indiana and all of American society in the first half of the 19th century.
Knight was employed by the United State Department of War in 1825, to be the Commissioner and surveyor of the National Road through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The National Road became the largest financial undertaking by the federal government prior to the Civil War. In 1827 the town of Knightstown, Indiana was named in his honor. Knight was the official who determined the route that the National Road took through Indiana. After completing his work on the National Road, he was hired to be the first Chief Civil engineer of the B&O Railroad, American’s first commercial railroad. Under Knight’s management the B&O started at the port of Baltimore passing over and through the Appalachian Mountains to the Ohio River, thus creating a major economic and cultural impact for those states that bordered the Ohio River. Knight was a brilliant self-taught mathematician; he was a devout Quaker that worked to stop the spread of slavery in the years prior to emancipation. Like Abraham Lincoln, Knight was a member of the Whig Party, and a proponent of Henry Clay’s American System. Knight opposed the Presidencies of Democrats Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Knight served in the Pennsylvania State Senate for 6 years and in 1854 was elected the United States Congress from his home of Washington, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Chase’s Power Point presentation will have over 70 slides, and he will be sharing maps and images of early Indiana history and development.
Send a message to learn more
