NEW STRAITSVILLE, Ohio - Ann Cramer went to the Payne Cemetery late last
month with the idea of repairing and straightening some of the century-old
headstones.
Instead, the
archaeologist for Wayne National Forest turned up another in a long line
of mysteries.
On this occasion, the work crew - the U.S. Forest Service and inmate volunteers from Hocking Correctional Institution - uncovered pieces of another headstone buried a few inches beneath the spring grass.
"It only has a last name, 'Payne,' on it and a tree of life like a willow," Cramer said. "We don't know who it is. I'd like to think it's Evan S. Payne. It's right next to Frances, his wife. We don't know for sure, though."
No records have been found for the cemetery, so it is unlikely that Cramer will ever know who lies next to Frances Payne.
"We're not talking about digging up plots," Cramer said. "The Forest Service doesn't do that. We are interested in finding more stones and finding out more names. Without cemetery records, it's all we have."
Between 1852 and 1900, the Payne served as the cemetery for what seems to have been a tightknit community of black and mulatto farm and coal-mining families in Hocking and Perry counties. Six Civil War veterans are among those interred.
The last burial occurred in 1927. By that time, most of the family names carved in the sandstone markers - Payne, Striblin, Betts, Harper, Mabry, Lett, Norman, Graison, Dixon and Nixon - had disappeared from the tax and land records of the area.
Four months ago, genealogists Sharon Dailey, Lois Walker and Shandra Barnes knew more about where the families had come from than where they had gone. The three mapped a trail that had begun in Virginia plantations in the early 19th century and moved to the area of Captina in Ohio's Belmont County by the 1820s and to the hollows and hills surrounding the Payne by the 1850s. They thought the descendants had abandoned the cemetery.
After a Feb. 1 story about the cemetery was published in The Dispatch, they learned otherwise. They have met and interviewed a number of descendants of the families, though, have been unable to shed much light on the lives of their ancestors.
The give-and-take of the Payne continues.
"We still don't know much more about what happened here," Cramer said. "Was it a community? How did they live? We feel it was a community, but we don't know much about that. We've gotten a lot of information about the period prior to that community . . . We don't seem to be able to find out what the story was right here. The coal companies came in and obliterated a lot of the evidence of the farms and residences. But there has to be somebody who knows."
Jesse Gregory Payne moved from the family farm to Columbus at the turn of the century. He died in 1940, a retired captain in the city's fire department. His twin brother, John, a pharmacist, stayed behind. He died in 1894. His death certificate lists his home as Payne's Crossing. The brothers were sons of Evan S. and Frances Payne.
The family still owned the farm into the 1960s, said Columbus resident Virgie Sawyer, one of Jesse G. Payne's granddaughters.
"We used to go down there when I was a little girl," Sawyer said. "Grandpa had a tenant farming the place then. We'd have picnics and things. You could see cornfields for miles. That corn was all to make moonshine.
"The house was torn down. I remember how steep the hills were down there. The farmhouse was torn down because it was built of cherry wood. They sold wood. It was like gold because it was cherry."
Sawyer's brother, Cheltz Peyton of Columbus, remembers the family outings, his grandfather's farm but not a settlement called Payne's Crossing.
"I used to stand there in the front door (of the farmhouse) and watch the train go by at the train's crossing where they had the upside-down flat car for a station," he said. "It was just an upside-down flat car in the middle of the field. The train would go by and blow its whistle. If you wanted to get on, you'd have to jump on. I never knew anybody to get off of it, as far as I know. Nobody stays on a farm any more people grow up and leave."
The Payne descendants passed the notice of their grandfather's death around Sawyer's living room. The man in the newspaper photograph looks hauntingly like the people in the room.
The Payne gives.
Through the years, family members always have visited the cemetery.
"I was there in the '80s," said Dick Page, Sawyer and Peyton's cousin. "I was leaning on a sign that said 'Payne Cemetery,' and the 'Payne' fell off. A truck went by, and somebody popped off a shot. It wasn't no BB. There must have been 50 shot marks in that sign. A few years before that, we went down and posted 'No Hunting and Trespassing' signs."
They know nothing of their great-grandfather Evan S. Payne's cousins, Thomas and Evan Payne, or of neighbors Henry Striblin and James Betts. All fought for the Grand Army of the Republic in the Civil War.
The Payne takes away.
"We didn't know about the Civil War exploits," Sawyer said. "Uncle George Payne fought in World War I. We were raised up with those stories."
Genealogist Sharon Dailey, a nurse in Lancaster, thinks the stories are out there somewhere. She hopes to know more later in the summer, by the time the Forest Service dedicates a monument to the cemetery.
"Each day we move a little closer," Dailey said. "Even though the physical restoration of the cemetery is nearly complete, we're still a good six months before we can offer some firm answers.
"I think we're really close. Each interview we do, I think we move a little closer. We've done tons and tons of homework. It just takes one thing to tie it all together."