Howard Rollin Patch (1889–1963)

Howard Rollin Patch (1889-1963) was the son of mining engineer Maurice Byron and Emily Isabella (White) Patch. He attended public school in Buffalo; studied at Hobart College (B.A. 1910); and graduated M.A. (1912) and Ph.D. (1915) from Harvard. He taught at Harvard and at Bryn Mawr College until settling at Smith College in 1919 where he was a member of the faculty of English philology until he retired in 1957. He co-edited the journal 'Smith College Studies in Modern Languages'. He was married to Helen Kennedy and had a daughter. He left the Episcopal Church and converted to Catholicism in 1950. Interested in the theater and music, he composed the lyrics and melody of some operettas. He is best known for his studies of the goddess Fortuna and of eschatology in medieval European literature, as well as studies on both Boethius and Chaucer.