2013 Reunion Photos

 



 

 




 

Top left: Robert Leach      

Top right: President Patsy Sharp

Bottom left: Gloria Hearn and Laura Bonnette

Bottom right: I.B Payne and Billy Bustin

 

2013 REUNION



 

 

Over 20 of us were there Oct. 12 for this year's reunion.  Patsy Sharp will continue as president, and I will be secretary again for next year. 

 

I'm planning to add photos occasionally of past and current family members.  I'll start by posting the photo below of Dr. George Hearn who died a few years ago and served earlier for many years as president of the Payne-Foster Reunion.  Dr. Hearn was mentioned in an earlier post, and his wife, Gloria Hearn, told me recently that Dr. Hearn was a Louisiana College psychology faculty, not a sociology faculty member (as I had earlier indicated).  Not sure how I had received the mistaken information before, but I wanted to make that correction here.

 

 

 





2013 Payne-Foster Reunion Set For October 12

The annual Payne-Foster Reunion is scheduled this year for Saturday, Oct. 12 from 10am until later that afternoon.  Please attend and bring a covered plate dish to share with relatives.  We'll meet at the Hudson Community Center adjacent to the old Hudson tabernacle.  This site is just off Hwy. 34 about nine miles north of Winnfield, LA. 

Through this web site (and its postings in recent years) and these annual reunions, perhaps we can answer questions that you have about your family history.  We usually have some great door prizes, and the wonderful meals together are always a big part of these reunions.

DR. J. PAUL PETERS

 

 

Dr. J. Paul Peters, Jr., M.D., age 84, of Winnfield passed away on April 29, 2013.  Dr. Peters attended many Payne/Foster Reunions, and his presence and support will be missed by many.  Our condolences extend to his wife Ina Walker Peters, his son Paul, his daughter Susan Brewton (all of Winnfield), and his grandchildren. 

 

Dr. Peters was a decendant of Helen Payne (daughter of Dr. I.B. Payne and Sarah Foster Kidd Payne) and the son of James Paul Peters and Iver Walker Peters. He was born in Ruston in 1928 and was a graduate of Northwestern Louisiana State University and the LSU Medical School.  Dr. Peters was a flight surgeon captain in the US Air Force during the Korean Conflict and previously served as Winn Parish Coroner.  He was active in many civic organizations (Rotary, Shriners, etc.) and a member of the First United Methodist Church of Winnfield. 

 

FARMING THEN 

Winn  Parish, and particularly the area around Dodson, New Hope, and Hudson, was a very different place a century ago than it is today.  It was a bustling and fairly populated area.  Due to the virgin timber boom, many moved into the area to seek a better life.  Farming was still the mainstay, though, for many people there. Unlike the more fertile land along rivers and streams in the southern and western part of the parish, many farmers in this area had hilly, sandy and clay land that was less productive.  

The cash crop then was cotton, but the emergence of the boll weevil in the first decade of the century cut cotton crop productivity later by nearly half.  Poisons then could have helped somewhat with the boll weevil problems, but many farmers couldn't afford these poisons.  Corn was also a major crop for many, since it could be fed to the farm animals, and cornbread was common fare at the dinner table.  Corn was shelled and taken to a local gristmill for grinding.  Peanuts were also quite commonly grown at area farms.  Cows and mules ate the corn shulks, hay, and peanut hulls.  Peas, beans, soybeans, tomatoes, potatoes, greens, sweet potatoes, peaches, and other fruits were also common crops for personal use.  Some farmers, like Buddy Payne, later bought canning equipment and then packaged and sold some canned items, such as tomatoes and peaches.

Sugar cane was another popular crop there.  When late October and November arrived, the cane was cut and carried to someone nearby who had a syrup mill.  The cane was stripped and chopped and then cooked and packaged in gallon cans.  Buddy Payne often would get 50-100 gallons of ribbon cane syrup at that time of the year.  Some of it the family would consume, and some of it was sold at his store.

Farmers then would set aside some of their surplus from good crop years as protection from the occasional year when droughts, bad weather, and poor crops occurred.  Buddy Payne would save seeds as well and sell or give these seeds to local farmers.  The Buddy Payne family didn't have many luxuries, but they had the basics (and more than many other families who had less acreage and didn't operate a community store).  
 

ANNUAL REUNION NEWS

The Payne-Foster Reunion is scheduled this year for Saturday, Oct. 20 from 10:00am until later in that afternoon.  We're expecting a larger turnout for this reunion due to a key change in the timing for the related Buddy and Martha Payne Reunion.  This Buddy and Martha Payne Reunion had been held previously over an early June weekend every even-numbered year.  The organizers of this Buddy and Martha Payne Reunion decided that it would be better to avoid the extreme heat and humidity of previous June reunions and to shift this reunion to coincide with the October reunion of the broader Payne-Foster Reunion.  The Buddy and Martha Payne Reunion will start Friday afternoon (Oct. 19) and run through Sunday afternoon, but a portion of this time (Sat. 10-2 or so) will be devoted to getting together with the broader set of kin who attend the annual Payne-Foster Reunion.  The agenda for the annual Payne-Foster Reunion will continue as before with lunch set for about 12:00 noon; however, we'll likely see more attendance from the Buddy and Martha branch of the family.

Looking forward to the nicer weather of October and seeing you at this year's reunions.

Early History of Dr. I.B. Payne

Isaac B. Payne was born in Wilkinson County, Georgia in 1837.  He was one of seven children of Joseph Payne and Senia or Seney Crumbley Mitchell.  He was the grandson of Joseph Payne, Sr. and Mary Brassfield who moved from the area near Camden, South Carolina to Wilkinson County, Georgia  around the turn of the nineteenth century.  Isaac B. Payne was the great-grandson of Philip Payne and Mary Flannegan.  Philip Payne apparently had roots among the many Virginia Paynes, while Mary Flannegan was an immigrant (and probably an indentured servant in her early years in the South Carolina colony) from Northern Ireland.

Isaac B. Payne’s maternal line is still much of a mystery.  His mother was supposedly of full or mixed-blood Creek.  She was born a Crumbley and was legitimated and adopted in 1819 by a fairly prosperous Wilkinson County, Georgia couple, Isaac and Elizabeth Mitchell.  State records imply that Isaac Mitchell was Seney Crumbley’s birth father.  In later years, it appears that Isaac Mitchell had little confidence in his son-in-law, Joseph Payne. His will written in 1840, well before his death a decade later, specifies that under no condition should Joseph Payne be an administrator of or in control of assets left to his adopted daughter Senia and their children, which would have included the 15-20 slaves that the 1840 census indicates were held by the Mitchells.

The older children of Joseph and Seney Crumbley Mitchell Payne appear in the 1840 federal census, but the 1850 census shows three of these children under the household of Isaac and Elizabeth Mitchell, then 78 and 79 years of age.  Something happened to Isaac Payne’s parents between 1840 and 1850 that left three of the male Payne children, including Isaac, in the household and care of the Mitchells and other Payne children listed in other nearby households.  Based on her research, Peggy Payne has indicated that Joseph Payne lived for some years beyond 1850 and appeared in a county court later in the divorce of one of his daughters.  Perhaps Seney died in childbirth with her last child or from disease.

Apparently Seney’s Indian heritage was present in her children.  There are stories of difficulties for her youngest son, Joseph B. Payne, assimilating into white culture and his stated intention to resettle in the Indian Territories in Oklahoma.  He apparently left a family in Georgia under troubled circumstances and accusations of misconduct and started a new family in Louisiana.

Upon Isaac Mitchell’s death in the early 1850s, the administrator of his estate, Thomas N. Beale, reported periodically on the expenses and disbursement of the Mitchell estate to the Payne children.  During these years, Isaac attended local schools.  He boarded for a short time with his older brother, James W. Payne, who was a young schoolteacher in Wilkinson County (Davidson, 1930, Chapter 24) as well as boarded with a Dr. James T. Hudson, M.D., who practiced medicine in that county.  Isaac B. Payne completed his education in 1857 at the Albany Medical School in New York.  Why did he attend medical school, and why so far away from his native Georgia?  What influence, too, did young Isaac’s exposure to a far different culture in Albany, NY have on his later life in Louisiana?