Payne, Colonel Lewis S. (1819-1898).htm

Col. Lewis S. Payne was born in the town of Riga, Monroe county, N. Y., January 21, 1819, the son of Stephen and Ruth A. (Smith) Payne. The Payne family is of honorable New England ancestry and its founder in the New World was of Puritan stock. His paternal grandfather, Aepba Payne, was a native and lifelong resident of Massachusetts. He was a soldier in the war of 1812. His son, Stephen Payne, father of Colonel Payne, was born in 1790, in Hinesdale, Mass., settling in Monroe county when a young man. He died at the residence of his son, Colonel Payne, at North Tonawanda, February 11, 1880, in the ninetieth year of his age. Col. Lewis S. Payne was educated in the common school and High School in Monroe county. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk in a mercantile house in Tonawanda, and five years later he and a fellow clerk purchased the business in which they had been employed. Four years afterward the partnership was dissolved and Mr. Payne accepted a position as clerk in Buffalo, remaining there four years. In 1847 he built the first steam saw mill in North Tonawanda, which he operated for nine years, after which he engaged in the lumber business for several years.

In the fall of 1861 Mr. Payne, at his own expense, raised a volunteer company, of which he was made captain, and which was attached to the 100th N. Y. Vol. Regiment, later becoming a part of Casey's Division of the Army of the Potomac. The l00th N. Y. Regiment, with Colonel Payne leading his company, participated in the battles of Williamsburg, Seven Pines, White Oak Swamp, Malvern Hill among others. Later on he and his company made many daring expeditions from the vicinity of Charleston, and the information thereby gained was of great value to the Union cause. On the night of August 3, 1863, while engaged on Morris Island in intercepting communication with Fort Sumter, he was attacked by a superior Confederate force. A desperate engagement followed, in which Colonel Payne was wounded in the head by a musket ball, taken prisoner and conveyed to Charleston, where he was confined in the Queen Street Hospital Later he was removed to Columbia, S. C, and February 14, 1865, he was sent to Wilmington, N. C, where he was exchanged March 5. Soon after his imprisonment ended he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel.

In 1840 Colonel Payne married Mary Tabor, of Ithaca, N. Y., and they have six children: Emily R., wife of George Crandall, of Will- iamsport, Pa.; Eugene R., who resides in Williamsport ; Ida, Mrs. George McCray, of Buffalo; Edward C, of Decatur, Ala.; Lewis C, a lawyer at North Tonawanda, and Cornelia R., wife of Lyman Stanley. Col. Payne is a member of Tonawanda Lodge No. 247, F, & A. M., and a vestryman of St. Mark's P. E. church. Politically Colonel Payne is an aggressive Democrat, and has served in nearly every office in tlie gift of his town. In 1850 he was elected clerk of Niagara county on the National Whig ticket and in 1859 was nominated for State senator in the Twenty-ninth New York district, but was defeated. In 1865 he was again elected county clerk on the Democratic ticket, and in 1869 was elected to the Assembly. In 1877 he was elected State senator from the Twenty-ninth district. In 1883 he was the Democratic can- didate for Congress in his district, but was unable to overcome the big Republican majority in his district. Colonel Payne has always stood high in the esteem of his fellow townsmen and ranks as one of the foremost citizens of Niagara county.

About 1854 or 1855, Col. Lewis S. Payne, a Civil War hero, purchased the old Anguish farm in the Town of Wheatfield at what is now the northwest corner of Payne's Avenue and Wheatfield Street in North Tonawanda. On Feb. 5, 1859, Col. Payne and 12 freeholders petitioned the highway commissioners of the town fo lay out a road from the Payne farm to Tonawanda Creek, half the distance of which was in woods and timbered land. This road, called Payne's Road, evidently stopped at the wooded section at Goundry Street, for on May 8, 1866. the Board of Trustees of the newly created village of North Tonawanda passed a resolution laying out a street from Sweeney's Lane (Sweeney Street) to the intersection of Payne's Road to be known as Forest Street. At a meeting of the Board of Trustees held on Dec. 1. 1868, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: "Resolved that the streets in said village known as Forest Street and Payne's Road, one road being a continuation of the other shall hereafter be known as Payne's Avenue and shall be known as Payne's Avenue from the northerly end of said road to the Tonawanda Creek." However, at a meeting of the trustees held on Aug 11, 1874, the board adopted the following resolution: That the name of the street heretofore known as Forest Street and now known as Payne's Avenue is hereby changed to the name of Mohawk Avenue and the said street is to be known as such.'" The name 'Mohawk Avenue" was, however, shortlived, for at a regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of the village held on June 7, 1875, the following appears: "Resolved that the resolution passed by the Board of Trustees of this village on the 11th day of August. 1874, purporting to alter or change the name of Payne's Avenue to Mohawk Avenue, be and the same hereby is recinded (sic), annulled and expunged and that the said street be named, called and known hereafter as it has been for many years heretofore as Payne's Avenue." The ayes had it and the resolution was adopted.