UPSON COUNTY, GA - BIOS Lewis W. Paine ***************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm *********************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: David E. Paterson Published in UHS Newsletter Aug, Sept, Oct 1998 Lewis W. Paine:Technician, Teacher, Author,Felon by David E. Paterson History is mostly the study and interpretation of written words from the past. What is not written is soon forgotten; while what we write and preserve about the events of our generation becomes the evidence of history for the generations who follow us. Most of us leave little or no tangible record of our lives. When we are gone, our names and our accomplishments, great or small, are thus doomed to darker obscurity with each passing day. One exception, however, is Lewis W. Paine, the only person in the 19th century known to have written and published a book about Upson County. Printed in 1851 under the unlikely title Six Years in a Georgia Prison, two-thirds of this small volume are devoted to Paine's observations and experiences of life in Upson County. An otherwise insignificant man, an outsider who lived here for only four years, thus has left us the most important account we have of Upson County in the 1840's. Lewis W. Paine was bom in Smithfield, Rhode Island, on January 11, 1819. At age ten, his father apprenticed him to a New England farmer; but, by age 15, both his mother and father were dead, and he was working in a Northern factory. As a teenager, he attended school only when he could save enough money from various jobs. As a young adult, and married, he worked as a school teacher and as an operative in the Fall River, Massachusetts, cotton cloth industry. In the summer of 1841, he contracted with D. R. Perry & Co. to go to Upson County, Georgia, to set up and operate some new machinery (today, we might call him a factory technician) in a cotton factory at iWaynmanville;' After a six-week trip, he arrived in October in Upson to start his new job. He was favorably impressed with what he called our "sultry clime," and the more healthy diet of the population; smoked bacon, corn bread, flour, rice, and garden vegetables — although he missed his accustomed condiments. He described the houses as "very poor... mostly built of logs" but open and airy, and well suited to the climate. The slaves, however, (he wrote) "excited my curiosity more powerfully than all other things." Paine wrote much about the lives of the slaves in Upson County, describing their joys and sorrows, their childhood, work, leisure activities, punishment, religion, marriages, family life, and funerals. He even described a slave auction in Thomaston, at which he witnessed the agony of families broken up by sale. A law- abiding citizen, however, Paine carried out his civic obligations, including serving his turn as a "patroller" -a member of the posse of night-roaming men whose purpose was to detect suspicious movements and punish illegal activities among the slave population. To his employer, he made no secret of his abolitionist sentiments, but was once warned by Mr. Perry that if he made his principles known publicly, "he could have his house surrounded by fifty men within half an hour." A Mr. Sullivan once told Paine that "the slaves were well provided for, and were better off than the factory hands of the north." An indignant Paine replied that "I was one of the white slaves of the north, and as he [Sullivan] had never seen one, he could behold in me a fair and average sample of the class." He refused Sullivan's embarrassed attempts to apologize for what Paine considered a "very foolish" but common opinion in the South. Paine stayed in Mr. Perry's employment about fourteen months before sending for his wife and two children to join him. To enjoy more leisure, he left the mill and opened a school. It has been noted by a historian of our early education system that Georgians of that period showed a preference for Northern schoolteachers. At that time, there were no publicly operated local schools in Upson; white parents who could afford to educate their children paid tuition to privately run academies, or to local teachers like Paine who opened their own schoolhouses. White children whose parents could not afford to pay tuition could qualify for county aid from the • "Poor School Fund," which was financed through the poll tax and administered by Inferior Court. William A. Cobb, the Clerk of Inferior Court, was treasurer for the Poor School Fund, and among his official papers now at the Thomaston-Upson Archives we find Lewis W. Paine's original invoices, submitted for teaching some of these children (about half of the children named on his list were deemed ineligible by the Justices of Inferior Court, and Paine was disallowed compensation for teaching them). In his leisure time, Paine enjoyed attending Justices Court, held each Saturday in his local militia district, whereby he became acquainted with most of the people in the county. He also appreciated the cultural stimulation provided by the evening meetings of a debating society about two miles from his Waynmanville house. One night in March 1845, as Paine returned from one of these debates, and was turning his horse into the lot, a voice in the darkness called to him with an anguished request. After talking with this nocturnal visitor, Paine embarked on a course of action which would shortly lead to his arrest and conviction in Upson Superior Court for a felony crime, and would result in his spending the next six years of his life in the State Penitentiary at Milledgeville - but that is part of another story... Sources: Lewis W. Paine:Technician, Teacher, Author,Felon by David E. Paterson In last month's newsletter, we left Lewis W. Paine as he returned from the meeting of a debating society near Hootenville in March 1845. As Paine was putting up his horse for the night, he heard a voice calling to him from the darkness. The voice belonged to Samson, a slave from a neighboring plantation. Samson explained that he wanted Paine to help him escape to freedom. Paine considered that Samson the slave had nothing to lose and everything to gain by attempting his freedom; while Paine, a free man, had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Despite all the dangers to himself, Paine agreed to help. Samson had been bom in Virginia, about 1810-1813. At age 16, he became part of the migration of slaves from the old worn-out plantations of that state to the newly-cleared frontier farms of Georgia and Alabama. Sold to slave-traders, he described himself as "an uncommonly valuable piece of property" — powerfully-built, smart, and active. The trader who brought him to Georgia promised that if Samson would display all his valuable qualities so as to bring $1,200, he would give him $25. Thus it was that young Samson was sold for that price to James Walker ofUpson County. Two decades later, by 1845, Samson was owned by James Walker's son, Alien McWalker, one of the richest men in Upson County. Samson, now in his prime, was a skilled blacksmith. Described as a dark mulatto, between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, 200 pounds of muscle ("almost the proportions of a giant"), nevertheless he spoke with a stutter, his lower lip and chin subject to an involuntary trembling, and his gait marked by a limp, the reminder of a previously-broken thigh. Although we do not know their identity, Samson had a wife and children who were owned by Alien McWalker's brother, Nathaniel F. Walker, on a neighboring plantation. Samson was temperamentally unsuited to his condition, and chaffed at what he knew to be the unjust bonds of his enslavement. His occasional rebelliousness brought swift and harsh response from his master, who would whip him when he could catch him, and would further punish him by transfer to plantations at a distance from his wife and family. When the abuse became unbearable, Samson would "stay out;" meaning to hide in the woods, sometimes for months at a time. Slaves could stay out undetected because, as Lewis W. Paine explains in his book, "There [were] large tracts of timber, containing not only deep and almost impenetrable swamps, but caves, holes, shelving rocks and banks." Samson would hide there during the day, venturing out at night to forage for food on nearby plantations. Other slaves usually knew his whereabouts, but would not betray the secret (his wife was once whipped for not telling his location). When ready to come in, Samson would send word by some trusted fellow-slave to Alien McWalker that he would return to work if he would not be whipped. Samson had been staying out about three months when he appeared unexpectedly at Lewis W. Paine's house that March night. Paine had been planning a business trip to Alabama, which seemed to offer the perfect opportunity to help Samson escape. According to their plan, Paine would pretend that Samson belonged to him; together they would travel as far as the Coosa River, where Samson possessed "ways and means" to get to a free state. At noon on March 31, 1845, Paine bade farewell to his family and set out on his horse. That night, under cover of darkness, Samson took a cream-colored mare horse from the Peter Butts' Thomaston stable lot, and headed up the Alabama Road to rendezvous with Paine. They met about midnight, and traveled northwest three days without incident. In Paulding County, Paine sold the mare to a local man, an act which apparently aroused suspicions. Paine and Samson awoke next morning to find themselves surrounded by excited citizenry anxious to bring them to justice. As their escorts took them back toward Thomaston, Samson seized an opportunity to escape into the woods, and was not seen again until after Paine's trial. Paine spent a miserable five months in Sheriff Samuel Caraway's jail, awaiting trial. To pay his jailer's fees, all his meager property was seized and sold at the courthouse steps, leaving his family without means of support. His wife visited him in jail once, but eventually she and the children returned North, where she died Lewis W. Paine and the children were given up to foster care. On August 14, 1845, Paine was tried in Upson Superior Court on a charge of Simple Larceny, for stealing "a certain negro man slave, named Sampson... of the personal goods and chattels of one Alien McWalker." The judge appointed attorneys Amos Hammond and Z. Harmond to defend Paine. Paine had intended to plead not guilty, and to argue that the charge could not be proven because the property he was charged with stealing could not be shown in court or identified except through hearsay. Furthermore, he intended to argue that the court could riot prove jurisdiction because no-one could testify to seeing him and Samson together in Upson County. Advised by his lawyers that the jury was likely to find him guilty anyway, and that the Court might be lenient to him if he didn't take up time with a defense, Paine reluctantly agreed to plead guilty. Judge John J. Floyd told him he had "returned the hospitalities of the South with the blackest ingratitude," but because he had saved the State the expense of prosecution, he would sentence him to only seven years out of the maximum possible of ten years in the State Penitentiary at Milledgeville. Six years later, Lewis W. Paine was granted executive clemency, and returned North, where he wrote his book, Six Years in a Georgia Prison. The subsequent details of his life are unknown to me. What of Samson? He eventually returned to the Walker plantations, where he continued his work as a blacksmith. Alien McWalker died on June 22, 1849, and the estate remained in probate for ten years before the slaves were distributed among the heirs. Court-appointed commissioners divided the slaves into six nearly equal lots, "classifying them as far as possible by families." Samson was included in Lot #5 with Becky, Monroe, Alice, Ann, Patrick, and Susan; but, whether any of these people were part of his family is not evident. Helen 0. V. Walker, a minor child under the guardianship of John L. Woodward, drew Lot #5 on November 19, 1859. Within a few months, Samson was in trouble with the law. On April 20, 1860, he was involved in what was described only as a "difficulty" (the nineteenth-century euphemism for a fight) with John Pickard, a white man. In the course of the fight, Samson allegedly grabbed Pickard's rifle, assaulted him with it , then carried the gun off and broke it to pieces. Assault by a slave on a free white man could be punishable by death, and Pickard charged Samson with "assault with intent to murder." Apparently, however, some local citizens thought that justice would not be served by prosecuting this case -there may have been circumstances in Samson's favor which mitigated his offense in public opinion, but which would not be recognized by law. Three leading citizens, Thomas Beall, Thomas Cauthom, and Peter W. Alexander, undertook to mediate a settlement. In an agreement signed by John Pickard and John L. Woodward on May 2, 1860, Woodward (as guardian of Samson's owner, Helen Walker) agreed to pay Pickard $30 for his rifle and his trouble in the matter. Furthermore, Woodward was to "remove said negro Sampson beyond the limits of the state of Georgia & there leave him." In return, Pickard agreed to drop all charges against Samson, as long as the slave never returned to Upson County. Banished from his home of thirty-four years, Samson was transported that same week, possibly to Alabama, and sold for $1,200. Five years later, the Civil War would bring emancipation to the South's slaves. Whether Samson, about fifty years old when he left the red hills of Upson, lived to enjoy the freedom he had longed for, whether he was ever re-united with his family, whether he and Lewis W. Paine ever communicated or met again, or whatever his subsequent history may have been, has not yet been discovered. Sources: Lewis W. Paine, Six Years in a Georgia Prison (New York, 1851) Upson Co. Will Book "A" (James Walker's will, 1829) Loose Papers of Upson Superior Court (the State vs. Lewis W. Payne) Minutes of Upson Superior Court, August Term 1845 (the State vs. Lewis W. Payne) Upson Superior Court Criminal Record, 1852-60, May Term 1860 (the State vs. Sampson, a slave) Upson Court of Ordinary, Record of Accounts, Books C through E (Walker estates) Upson County Vouchers, Book C (Helen 0. V. Walker estate) Paine, Lewis W. Six years in a Georgia Prison (New York, 1851) Loose records of Upson Inferior Court. Poor School Papers, 1843-5 [ Paine came to Upson County from Rhode Island in 1841 to install machinery at the Waymanville Mill. Later he helped a slave named Samson to escape. For this he spent six years in a Georgia prison. He wrote a book about his experience. It is the first known book that tells us much about early Upson County. The runaway slave had escaped after arrest, and this episode tells us what else is know about him.]