George Moffitt Patrick, physician and soldier, was born on September 30,1801,in Albemarle County, Virginia. In 1803 he accompanied his parents Charles and Dorcas to Lafayette County, Kentucky, where he received his primary education. He subsequently earned a medical degree at Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky.

He immigrated to the Harrisburg district of the Austin colony, Texas, in January 1828 and established himself as a farmer, and one of the most knowledgeable men in Texas for locating, assessing, and surveying land.  In 1831 he was elected second alcalde of Anahuac and married his first wife Sarah Prudun Morgan, the niece of Colonel James Morgan.  And in 1832 Dr. Patrick was chosen regidor of Anahuac.  In the same year, Colonel Morgan and John Reed planned to open a mercantile in Anahuac, but they ran into trouble when the Mexican Collector of customs assessed large tariffs on their imported goods.  Morgan's defiance of the tariff evaluation was one of many disagreements that led to a disturbance and the arrest of William B. Travis and Patrick Jack.  Dr. Patrick sided with his friends, but escaped arrest due to his official office.  Travis and Jack were later released.

In July of 1835 Dr. Patrick was among the volunteers under the command of Capt. William B. Travis who captured the Mexican fort and garrison at Anahuac.  He represented Liberty Municipality in the Consultation of 1835 and on November 13 signed the articles that established the provisional government of Texas. He withdrew from the Consultation due to illness in his family but served as a liaison officer between the provisional government at San Felipe and the army then besieging Bexar. On November 30, with William A. Pettus, he reported "much dissatisfaction and inquietude pervading the army" but assured the council that "if their wants are supplied-no fears can be entertained of their abandoning the siege of Bexar." On March 25, 1836, the council appointed Patrick to organize the Harrisburg County militia and instructed him to order two-thirds of the troops immediately into active duty. "At great personal expense and labor" he mustered twenty recruits into what became Capt. Moseley Baker's company of Gen. Sam Houston's army. During the Runaway Scrape Patrick's farm, Deepwater was for a time the seat of the Texas government, and as the Mexican army approached, he accompanied President David G. Burnet and his cabinet first to New Washington (Morgan's Point), and then to Galveston where, for a time, he served as Commander of the schooner Flash. The schooner Flash was the Texian Privateer owned by Colonel Morgan and is remembered, for participating in the delivery of the “Twin Sisters”, the two cannons used by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto.  Following the battle of San Jacinto, Houston moved his army onto Patrick's plantation about three miles up Buffalo Bayou, from the battlefield because, according to Robert Hancock Hunter, "the de[a]d Mexicans began [to] smell."