William O. Payne
William
O. Payne, Esq., the subject of this sketch is descended from one of the oldest
and most worthy families in Tennessee. His ancestors by both the paternal and
maternal sides followed Sevier and Shelby from North Carolina and Virginia to
the Watauga settlement about the year 1770; were with them at King's Mountain,
and afterward with Gen. James Robertson across the mountains to the French Lick,
now the city of Nashville. Josiah Payne, his great-grandfather, was among the
first of the little army that penetrated the wilderness to that frontier
settlement, and his name appears upon the first tax list that was ever prepared
for Davidson County. William Payne, his grandfather, and Elizabeth Payne, his
grandmother, both being of the same name and distantly related, were married
about the year 1787, and soon thereafter removed to a point on the Cumberland
River, about forty-five miles by land east from Nashville to what is now Smith
County, cut the cane and built a home in the bend of that river which took its
name from his settlement as Payne's Bend, and is still known by that name. John
Payne his father, son of William and Elizabeth Payne, was born on this old
homestead in the year 1800, grew to manhood, and in 1823 was married to Eunice
Graham Chambers, who was born in the year 1805, and was the worthy daughter of
John Chambers another early immigrant to that settlement. John Payne died at the
old home in April, 1848, his wife Eunice Chambers Payne surviving him many
years, and died in the year 1883 at the age of seventy-eight years. William C.
Payne our subject, was born to John and Eunice Payne in Smith County Tenn., on
the 9th of August 1831, being the fourth of six children. He grew up on the old
farm, and secured his education first at the country school near his father's
home, was afterward sent to Oakland Academy, at Dixon's Springs, in Smith
County, Tenn., from there he went to Irving College in Warren County, Tenn., and
thence to Cumberland University at Lebanon in Wilson County, Tenn., graduating
from the law department of that institution in the year 1855. On the 27th of
November, 1852, he was married to Miss Mary Joliffe Bruce, daughter of Dr.
Edward H. and Harriet Martin Bruce. Dr. Edward Bruce and wife were Virginians by
birth and education, who bad moved to and settled in Smith County some years
before. Dr. Bruce was the son of Robert Bruce, a Scotch gentleman, who came from
Scotland at an early day, and settled in the valley of Virginia near Winchester.
He was a lineal descendant from Robert Bruce of Scotland. Our subject, after
spending a year in the West, looking about, returned to his native State, and
began the practice of law at the town of Sparta in White County, Tenn., in the
early part of the year 1857. He at once took good rank in his profession, and
was in a few months elected attorney-general for his district, which position he
held until the breaking out of the civil war between the States. Being an ardent
Southern man and much attached to his native State, which a long line of
honorable ancestry had helped to settle and build up, he entered the Confederate
Army in September, 1861, serving first in the infantry, and afterward as a staff
officer on the staff of Gen. George G. Dibrall. Though never
Goodspeed's History of East Tennessee 1887