Payne Township Sedgwick County Kansas Genealogy Trails

Payne

This township was organized in the fall of 1870, and named in honor of its first settler, David L. Payne, who has obtained national celebrity from his connection with the movement to establish the Oklahoma colony in the Indian Territory. Captain Payne was the originator of the scheme and is still president of the Oklahoma Association. He was born December 30, 1838, in Fairmount, Grant Co., Ind., and was raised on a farm. He received a common school education. April 15, 1858, he arrived in Burr Oak Township, Doniphan Co., Kan., and engaged at once in the native lumbering business, which he followed until July 16, 1861, when he enlisted as a private in the Fourth Kansas Regiment of Infantry, which afterwards, in connection with the Third Kansas, became the Tenth Kansas. He served three years with this command in the capacity of a private, declining the offer of a Lieutenant's commission five times. In the Kansas Legislature of 1865 he represented one of the districts of Doniphan County, in the Lower House. In the spring of 1865 he joined General Hancock's Veteran Army corps, in which he served until honorably discharged after one year's service. In January, 1867, he was elected Sergeant-at-Arms of the Kansas State Senate, and served as such through that session. In the spring of 1867 he was appointed Postmaster at Fort Leavenworth, in which position he served personally from April, 1867, until July following, and by deputy until the following September. July 2, 1867, he joined the Eighteenth Kansas Cavalry Regiment, which was organized for six months service on the plains. He served through the campaign in the capacity of Captain of Company D. During the session of the Legislature of 1868 he filled the position as Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, to which he had been elected the previous session. In November, 1868, he joined the Nineteenth Regiment of Kansas Cavalry, another command organized for six months' service on the plains. In this regiment he was appointed Captain of Company H, in which position he served during the existence of the command. He was engaged in the campaign against the Cheyennes, in which was effected the rescue of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White, in March, 1869, on the headwaters of the Red River, in the Panhandle of Texas. These ladies had been captured from their homes on the Republican River, in Kansas, in the summer of 1868, by Cheyenne Indians, and had suffered all of the indignities and cruelties that the wild savage is capable of inflicting. During a portion of this campaign Captain Payne served as dispatch bearer for General Custer. April 5, 1870 he removed to Sedgwick County and established "Payne's Ranch" at the crossing of the old Santa Fe trail on Dry Creek, in what is now Payne Township. In the Legislature of 1872 he represented Sedgwick County in the Lower House. He was the author of the bill which passed at this session to remove the disabilities of Confederate soldiers in Kansas. From 1874 to 1879 he was Assistant Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives at Washington. In 1879 he served four months as Government Steamboat Inspector, his time being divided between Florida and Norfolk, Va. He returned to his home in Payne Township in April, 1880, and immediately organized the Oklahoma Colony, of which he was elected president, and still remains as such. He has been arrested and driven from the Indian Territory six times by United States troops, but he still believes that his cause is sustained by law and equity, and will not surrender his position until the question in dispute has been settled by the Supreme Court. His position is that the lands in the Indian Territory which have not been apportioned to Indian tribes are the sole property of the Government, and as such are subject to settlement by citizens of the United States. Captain Payne is six feet four inches in height and is a fine specimen of manly beauty. He is modest and unassuming, and has none of the appearances of a bravado. He has all of the qualifications for a frontier leader, being cool, courageous, cautious, honorable and thoroughly practical. In Sedgwick County, where he is best known, no man has made more warm friends than Captain David L. Payne. The first Justice of the Peace in Payne Township was Robert Wilson, who was appointed in July, 1870. The township is well watered, Greenwich is the postoffice. There are three good church organizations and five good school buildings in the township. Population, 519; valuation of property, $176,948. (William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas, Sedgwick County, Part 2, Township Sketches)