Observance of Memorial Day always compels me to think about the members of my extended family from Block Island who served in the Civil War, and the long-term effects of the war on their lives. This carte-de-visite photo of eighteen-year-old George Albion Paine, taken in the spring of 1866, belies his turbulent experiences.1
In September 1862, when he was not quite 15, George volunteered to serve for nine months in the 12th Regiment of Rhode Island Volunteers. Patriotic fervor must have swept over the island, because George’s paternal uncle, Alvin Hollis Paine, his maternal uncle Lewis N. Hall, and his uncle-by-marriage, John Thomas, all joined him in the same regiment.2 Barely two months into his service, George was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, spending time in hospital. Comparison with later records shows that George had not yet reached his adult height at this time. He was discharged from the army in July 1863 and re-enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving as a landsman on ships Savannah and Constitution until discharge in 1866.
Piecing together the rest George’s tumultuous life required years of on-site research, which I conducted in the late 1980s. I learned that George married his first wife Helen Curle Allen in 1869, but soon abandoned her. She filed for divorce on grounds of desertion and later married Charles A. Gilbert. Now spelling his surname as Payne, George became a marketman, and married English-born Margaret Parkinson in New Bedford on 19 December 1876. She died in 1881, age 29. They had one son together, George Rubin Paine, raised in New Bedford by his maternal uncle Jacob Parkinson. There is no surviving evidence that George A. Paine had any interaction with his son after Margaret’s death.
George then returned to Rhode Island once again, where he married divorcée Amelia (Badmington) Powers in 1884. They had a daughter, Gertrude Payne, born the next year in Newport. By the early 1890s, however, Newport City Directories attest that George and Amelia lived at separate addresses. At that point George was working as a house-painter. Newport’s 1903 directory shows that he then moved to Bristol, Rhode Island, where I suspected he lived in the Soldiers’ Home. I checked, and was able to access his personnel files. At first I assumed that this was George’s last stop, but I was surprised to learn that on 14 June 1907, he was chastised for drunkenness and chose to sign himself out. With no subsequent record of a death in Rhode Island, I speculated he may have crossed Mount Hope Bay to Fall River, Massachusetts. My hunch proved true—I found out that he died there of a stroke, two weeks after leaving the home, at only 59 years of age.
On 6 July 1907, a paragraph in Fall River’s The Evening Herald conveyed the sorry circumstances:
“A Veteran Dead. The remains of a veteran of the Civil War lie at the undertaking rooms of J. E. Watson, Jr. on Bank Street. George Payne died at the almshouse Tuesday and no relatives claimed the body.”
Weeks later, Amelia supplied information for the death certificate. No stone marks George’s grave in Fall River’s Oak Grove Cemetery.3 In my middle school years, I would habitually cut through that same cemetery on my walk home—it never occurred to me I could have a relative buried in the same place as the infamous Lizzie Borden!
George’s estranged wife Amelia wasted no time in trying to obtain a Civil War widow’s pension. That process took her almost four years, because she needed to prove that she and George were still married despite years of separation. As Amelia lived until 1945, her pension file was not sent to the National Archives in Washington. It took me some months to track down the file at the Veterans Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, where I was able to access the original, but was not allowed to photocopy any part of it.4
Through obituaries and telephone directories, I tracked down Amelia and George’s only granddaughter: Gwendolyn Crutchfield, who lived in North Carolina. We had a brief phone call, during which she told me, “I have no interest whatsoever in learning anything about my grandfather, George.” Gwendolyn died in 1990, leaving no descendants.
It took me another decade to pick up the trail of George’s only son, George Rubin Paine, after he vanished from New Bedford in the 1920s. The internet opened portals to new descendants. I learned that George Rubin Paine died in Los Angeles on 20 November 1955, likely with no knowledge of his father’s Civil War exploits.
Memorial Day beckons us to remembrance. Undoubtedly, George Albion Paine struggled with demons he could not overcome. It saddens me that a Civil War veteran’s grave remains unmarked—a oversight I hope one day to rectify.
Notes
1 George A. Paine, son of Reuben W. and Lovicy (Hall) Paine, is the elder brother of my great-great grandmother, Mary (Paine) (Delano) Sylvia.
2 Michael F. Dwyer, “Some Civil War Soldiers from Block Island,” Rhode Island Roots 38(2012) 29–32.
3 Burial site 25-27, Dahlia Lane, Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River, Mass. Not listed in findagrave.com.
4 George A. Paine, alias George Payne, Amelia Payne, Pension XC 2684400, present whereabouts of the file unknown.
Another beautiful story of our past.
Thank you, Kevin.
I am also descended from a Payne, my great grandmother Selinda Power Payne (1838-1921) who married Ansel Frost Converse, and lived in upstate NY. However, her grandfather Gideon Payne (1765-1848) was born in Smithfield, Providence, RI, so perhaps there is a connection to your Rhode Island Paynes?
Carolyn, George’s grandfather, Nathaniel Briggs Paine, was born in 1791, out of wedlock. I am still looking for his father! Maybe DNA will get me there someday.
Michael, usually the “middle name,” because it was still not common practice then, is the giveaway for the father, especially if it was an agreement between families as opposed to a General Sessions issue. Of course that doesn’t tell you which Briggs boy, etc. but you know the paper trail best!
FYI. There are several Pain/Paine/Payne families criss-crossing across SE Mass and RI. And not related. One large group comes off of Block Island. My Paine people appear in Providence but before the Block Islanders arrive there and re-start from Freetown. The major group is off of Cape Cod and into northern Plymouth The fourth is out of Boston (see the Great Migration indexes and sketches) and gets to places like Seekonk AFTER my Paines leave that area, too.
Yep. From the Boston Paines – Stepehen Paine. This Ancestry Public Tree person has a decently sourced tree from your Gideon to Stephen.
Payne-Paine FamilyTree search Marge_McElhose – https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/74362075/person/40295088328/facts
back to Stpehen. There are several major articles on this family in The Register for you to follow up.
I;’ve never seen a Paine from one group marry a Paine from another group.
Best on your researches.
Thank you, Robert, for those suggestions. My “Paine,” literally, can best be summed up in an article I wrote, “Edward Paine of Block Island: His Sole Heir at Law,” in The American Genealogist 86: 20–26.
God speed to George. Michael, I hope you’re able to get him that marker he surely deserves.
Thank you, Jeff. I had better get serious now in time for next Memorial Day.
Hi Michael ~
I hope you are able to get a headstone for George soon. My family was able to provide a headstone for a distant relative and it was quite gratifying. You may not know that the government will pay for it. From the VA (https://www.cem.va.gov/hmm/):
“The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) furnishes upon request, at no charge to the applicant, a Government headstone or marker for the unmarked grave of any deceased eligible Veteran in any cemetery around the world, regardless of their date of death.”
However (from the same web page):
“Note: There is no charge for the headstone or marker itself, however arrangements for placing it in a private cemetery are the applicant’s responsibility and all setting fees are at private expense.”
The form to apply for a headstone is at the bottom of the same page.
Best of luck to you!
Wonderful suggestions, Sara! I will certainly follow through.
Reading this while listening to an extended version of Unger’s Ashokan Farewell.
Thanks for posting this. Has got me to thinking about my own Paine ancestor — Charley Paine and his Co. F, 7th Mass. buddies. Both Wildernesses, 2nd wave at Fredericksburg, reserve at Gettysburg, and all the marching, and the cold, rain, sweltering heat. Likely got home on leave but I’ve no traces of that. Met his wife-to-be at being demob when regiment arrived at town green, Taunton, as in “I want you to meet my brother.”
Haunting music that just stays with you!
Any relation to Robert Trent Paine?
No, but I wish my Paines could go further back than my George’s grandfather.
I am related to him through the Treats
Again, Michael amazes me with what he is able to “discover” and “uncover”. A question that came to me here, was why George’s relatives, who joined the Regiment, condoned his under age status? A Google search result shed some light on that… “As many as 20% of Civil War soldiers were younger than 18. That was the minimum recruiting age for Union soldiers, but many people willingly overlooked the law. The Confederacy set no minimum age.”
Ray, thanks for sharing that enlightening statistic. We should do an extended tree chart of how all these Block Island men were related to one another.
Are you aware the Federal govt supplies grave stones for veterans at no charge.
Through replies to this post, I am just learning about this service. Thanks for your response.
In my research I have found some very interesting characters in my Civil War veteran ancestors. When first revealed, I considered the first of them to be lacking any moral fiber. However, I did more research on my GG Grandfather and found evidence that he had been fine until after the war. This led me to reconsider the effects of that war on its survivors, especially in light of all we are learning about injuries and PTSD in soldiers in our modern wars. I would agree that your veteran probably faced horrors that we can barely imagine, changing him from who he might have been without the war. Thanks for sharing.
I appreciate your response. With life experience, I am much more empathetic to how all wars have impacted the lives of soldiers and the families.