George Paterson was born in Canada, but the family returned to Cornascreeb, near Tandragee, County Armagh, when he was an infant. He was educated at the National School, Aghory, County Armagh and was then apprenticed to a grocer in Portadown, County Armagh. In 1911 he became manager of Couser's Provision Store, Armagh. He was an amateur historian who collected traditional tales and dialect phrases and proverbs, and made detailed sketches of local architecture and furniture in South Armagh. In 1931 he became honorary curator, and in 1935, full-time curator of Armagh County Museum, retiring in 1963. When the Ulster Folk Museum was established in 1958, he was a Foundation Trustee. He wrote prolifically, and compiled 25 volumes of Armagh Miscellanea, including many articles of his own. He contributed to the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, and wrote for local newspapers under the pseudonym 'Cornascreeb'. His accounts of archaeological sites were published in the official Preliminary Survey of Ancient Monuments of Northern Ireland, 1940, and he subsequently published Country Cracks. He served on the South Armagh Hospital Committee, the Northern Ireland Committee of the National Trust,and helped re-establish the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 1938. He was an active member of the Armagh Field Club and of the Naturalists' Society, and in 1941 became a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1954 he was awarded an OBE. He was a genealogical researcher and an honorary member of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville, Tennessee for his research on the Campbellites. The society established a memorial fund for him.