Welcome Payne/Foster/Kidd family members.


Perhaps some of you are checking this blog site for the first time and after receiving my mailed update during this holiday season. I'm using this site to post news about our annual reunion, as well as bits and pieces about the history of our family and Winn Parish where our ancestors lived just before and long after the Civil War. Hope some of you in our family will respond with info that I can share here.

Dr. Isaac Bonaparte Payne and his wife, Sarah Jane Foster Kidd, will be a major and obvious choice for attention on this blog site; however, for this long post I'm going to describe aspects of Winn Parish history and members of our family about which/whom some of you are largely unaware.

Winn Parish shares some characteristics with other largely rural Southern locations, but it was truly a distinctive place in many ways. Huey Long and his political philosophy had roots going back at least to the Civil War. One historian, H.T. Kane, in 1941 claimed that "Winn became known as the wildest, orneriest parish of Louisiana, with a mind of its own and a will like a mule's." He described its people as poor and "persnickety" and producing only the crop of "dissent" in abundance.

The independent nature of those in Winn Parish was seen at the Louisiana Secession Convention held in early 1861, when its representative was one of only 17 to vote against secession and one of only seven to refuse to sign the passed ordinance. Many in the parish refused to enlist, and some fought openly for the Union side. They complained specifically about the ten percent tax (in kind) that the Confederacy had imposed on their crops. Many in Winn and Jackson Parishes protested the Confederacy draft, and conscription in this area into the Confederate forces was very limited. W. I. Hair (1991, p. 25) estimated that up to half of Winn's eligible young, white males escaped to hideaways in the thick forests and swamps there. According to his Union army friend John W. Shumaker, in a 1879 statement that Dr. Isaac B. Payne filed with the Southern Claims Commision for reparations, Dr. Payne escaped conscription from the Confederate cavalry and headed to the North. He returned later saying that the climate there was "too cold for him," and "his desire was for the U.S. to succeed." Later in 1864 Dr. Payne delivered several horses to Pineville for U.S. cavalry scouts there under the Union command of General Banks. Dr. Payne during the Reconstruction Period of 1871-1873 served as a justice of the peace and a police juror for the parish (at a time when former Confederate soldiers and supporters were restricted from parish or state offices, and some of them worked behind the scenes with home guard and clan activities).

Winn Parish was known for its strong agrarian interests after the Civil War. Agricultural associations, such as the Grange, located in the parish. The Grange state convention was held at Gaar's Mill in 1883, and a Grange store was built later in Sikes. Winn Parish was home to the Farmers' Alliance in the 1880s and the birthplace of the People's Party. The state's leading populist journal, called The Comrade, was begun in the parish when Alliance proponents bought the only parish newspaper. The Comrade was a weekly published every Thursday (Brinkley, 1982, p. 11), and "devoted to the interests of the People's Party and of Organized Labor, and engaged in the defense of the masses against the encroachment of the money power. Populism as a political movement hoped to organize farmers and workers to bury sectional (north vs. south) and racial (black vs. white) hostilities and to lead to more equity and less corporate domination. Winn Parish became the bastion of populism in Louisiana, and no other county in the South gave it more support. The Populist gubernatorial candidate in 1892, R. L. Tannehill, was a local resident and received 76.7% of the Winn Parish vote that year (Hair, 1991, p. 16).

Populism faded after the 1896 election, when the Populists joined the Democrats, but a more radical agarianism developed in the parish. Its followers drew largely upon ex-Populist farmers and from timber workers who felt exploited by corporations that moved into this virgin timber land, paid relatively low wages, and had little worker safety/health concern. The railroads and sawmills had been enthusiastically welcomed into the parish. Such industry brought new prosperity to some, but it changed the nature of life and work for those in the parish and created some new problems and stresses. A socialist group was formed in Sikes, and one of the very few socialist newspapers in the South, called The Toiler, was published in Dodson (Hair, 1991, p. 370). The message of this publication was a repeat of what some in the parish had long been saying about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer (Eakin, 1997, p. 50). Among the strong socialist supporters there was Turtulian Clement (or T. C.) Kidd, a son of Sarah Foster Kidd Payne by her first husband Iverson Kidd. T. C. Kidd served for several years as the secretary of the Socialist group in Sikes in the early 1900s (The Comrade, 12/12/1910). He was also the postmaster of the New Hope community (which some maps back then listed as the community of Payne or Grady).

So we have two family representives (as step-brothers) who held prominent positions in the area in the first decade of the 1900s. T. C. Kidd was one, and Joel T. Payne was the other. Joel T. Payne (son of Dr. Payne and Sarah Foster Kidd) was also a postmaster for Payne/Grady from 1895-1902, later editor and publisher of the Dodson Times, and also a Dodson mayor for a term starting in 1903. Joel T. Payne was somewhat more moderate politically. He belonged to the Woodmen of the World and the Farmers Union, and pushed as Dodson Times editor for improvements in roads/schools.

Guess this is enough history for one post, but I wanted to show how linked our family members were to the unique history of Winn Parish. Almost all of this post came from parts of the first two chapters of The I.B. Payne Families of Winn Parish (2002). For the full references (or otherwise) concerning the description above, check with me. I'll probably share other historical and family info in future posts -- particularly if there's interest in this. --- Steve