My Genealogy Hound

THOMAS PAYNE a practical and extensive general agriculturist and successful stock-raiser, well located in Weesaw Township, Berrien County, handles upon his large acreage a superior grade of cattle and also raises choice varieties of horses and hogs. For over thirty-five years a constant resident of his present locality, Mr. Payne has been intimately associated with the march of improvement, which has distinguished the history of Berrien County from its earliest settlement. He is by birth an Englishman and was born in Ivanhoe December 17, 1833.

The parents of our subject, John and Fannie (Ealing) Payne, were the descendants of a long line of sturdy English ancestry, and were reared and educated in their native land. Their union was blessed by a family of twelve children. Desiring to see their sons and daughters worthily fitted to occupy positions of usefulness and influence, the parents resolved to avail themselves of the broader opportunities offered in the United States and with the younger members of their family embarked for America in 1856, and, safely arriving in the land of promise, joined the son who had already preceded them to a new home in his adopted country.

Of the parental family, but two representatives now survive, Joseph, and Thomas, our subject. The parents made their home in Berrien County, where the devoted mother passed away in 1864. The father survived his wife eight years, and died in 1872 regretted by all who knew him. A man of upright character, earnest and industrious, his days had been spent in a round of energetic toil, leaving him but little time for rest or recreation. He was a sincere friend, a kind neighbor and a true and law-abiding citizen.

Our subject attended the free schools in England but his opportunities for study were limited and he is in the main a self-educated man, having through habits of close observation and reading added to the stock of knowledge gained in early youth. He came to America two years before his parents emigrated hither, and reaching Michigan in 1854, settled in Berrien County, a stranger in a strange land. Arriving here without any capital other than his youth, health and determination to succeed, he set himself energetically to work and with frugal management carefully laid aside a small sum which he invested May 26, 1857, in eighty acres of heavily timbered land. With this beginning as a nucleus for further effort Mr. Payne has self-reliantly won his upward way to a competence and now owns five hundred acres of excellent land, much of which is under cultivation and finely improved.

Our subject aside from the annual harvest of golden grain has upon his farm large herds of cattle fatted for market, and is at present feeding over one hundred head. In 1859, Thomas Payne and Miss Lydia Payne were united in marriage. The estimable wife bore her husband eight children, three of whom, Edward, Martha and James survive. The mother of these children died in 1886. Our subject took for his second wife Miss Zimmah Turner, a native of the British Isles. The marriage was celebrated in England October 12, 1887. Two children have been born unto this union, a little son and daughter, Thomas and May Belle.

Mr. Payne is not an active politician, but takes an intelligent interest in all matters of local and national importance, and cast his first Presidential vote for Abraham Lincoln. In all local enterprises of worth Mr. Payne lends a helping hand and is a true and loyal citizen, worthy of the high regard bestowed upon him by the entire community among whom he has now passed almost two-score years.