“The old Patton house at Maxwelton goes up in flames in a Fire District 3 practice burn Sunday. Firefighers and trainees practiced their firefighting skills with water and foam.Jim Larsen / staff photoA piece of South Whidbey’s history went up in flames Sunday on a bluff overlooking Maxwelton beach.The dilapidated old Patton house, once a focal point of the rural community, was burned to make way for a new home.Dorothy Patton now lives in Langley and says she couldn’t bear to watch the home’s demise. My husband John was born and raised there, she said. It started out as a little cabin and they added to it. There were too many memories there. I didn’t want to see it burn.John Patton, for decades a community leader on South Whidbey, died about five years ago.Although historic, the house wasn’t worth saving. Mrs. Patton said it had been abandoned for some time and vandals had been inside.Fire District 3 burned the house as a training exercise for new recruits, who sprayed water and a bit of foam at the structure. Nobody was allowed inside due to the unstable nature of the old building.Firefighter Les Hagstrom was one of those present who could remember the old house in its heyday when the Patton family always welcomed kids to the farm. John Patton was a well known chicken farmer, among other activities.All the kids in the neighborhood came over at one time or another, said Dorothy Patton. She and John lived in a new house he built before they were married so she never lived in the old house. We lived right up the hill on the same farm, she said.John Patton’s parents were John DeWitt Patton and Martha Patton, early settlers in the Maxwelton area. According to South Whidbey and Its People, Volume II, by Lorna Cherry, the elder Patton was living in Seattle when in 1906 he saw a newspaper ad for a large tract of land along Sills Road on Whidbey. He bought it, sold off all but 20 acres, and planted currants and fruit trees and built a small cabin. After marrying Martha he opened a small store which operated for several years. He later worked for the Clinton Union Grocery in Old Clinton. In 1926 he started the poultry farm that his son John Jr. would expand.John Patton Jr. was born in 1914, one of two sons born to John and Martha Patton. John Junior was active musically in the community and in Sunday School. He established a Sunday School at Cultus Bay and a vacation Bible school, the latter of which attracted two young women teachers from Simpson Bible Institute in Seattle for a summer. One of them was Dorothy Yates, who went on to marry John Patton, Jr. in 1946.John and Dorothy turned the poultry farm into one of the largest and most modern in the state. After his death, the farm property was sold to Steve and Wanda White.Wanda White said the five acres the old house sat on was recently sold to Arthur and Emma Applegate, who will build a new house. Wanda White also was saddened to see the old Patton house go up in flames. It was a real beautiful spot to live, she said. “