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SOURCE: History of Genesee County, Michigan
        pub. Everts and Abbott - 1879

        Page facing 140


                           CHAUNCEY S. PAYNE

  The name which stands at the head of this brief biographical notice is
that of one who was among the earlier settlers in Genesee County, and who
was an enterprising, public-spirited, and honored citizen of Flint for a
period of forty years.

  Chauncey Smith Payne was born at Schodack, Rensselaer Co., N.Y., on the
16th of November, 1795.  Having lost his parents by death while yet a
child, he was reared and educated by his grandparents until he was about
seventeen years of age, when his active temperament and spirit of
enterprise led him to leave the seclusion of his early home, to seek his
fortune in the neighboring city of Albany.  There he entered into a
partnership with his cousin, Hiram Payne (also a young man), in the watch
and jewelry business.  At the end of three years this partnership was
dissolved, and he entered into other business connections, continuing to
the close of the war of 1812-15, at which time, believing a Western venture
would prove profitable, he purchased the entire stock of his former
partner, and, with a part of it, proceeded to Detroit in 1816, journeying
through Canada with a team.  As it was just after the close of the war, the
national feeling and prejudice still ran high, and it was only by his
coolness and determination that he was able to pass through the Canadian
territory without molestation, and to reach Detroit in safety.

  Having disposed of his goods very advantageously, and being encouraged by
his success, he returned, by Lake Erie and Buffalo, to Albany, in the
spring of 1817, and in the following July reappeared in Michigan with a
large stock of merchandise, which he took to Mackinac.

  His second venture proving as successful as the first, he again proceeded
to Albany, and in 1818 brought out his third stock of goods, and located in
Detroit in permanent business as a merchant, having also a branch at
Mackinac.  His partner in Detroit was the late Levi Brown, with whom he
remained in very successful business connection for more than twenty years.

  In 1824 he married Miss Louisa L. Smith, of Detroit, daughter of Jacob
Smith, the well-known trader, who had made the first improvements upon the
site of the present city of Flint, in 1819.  Immediately after the death of
Mr. Smith, in 1825, Mr. Payne made his first visit to Flint River, to look
after the affairs of the deceased, and to take formal possession of the
landed property owned here by his wife and the other children of Mr. Smith.
This visit, however, was but temporary, and he soon returned to Ohio, where
just previous to his marriage he had established a lucrative business.

  His location in that State was first at Cleveland, but he soon after
removed to Willoughby, Ohio, where, in addition to his merchandising, he
was engaged in milling and various other enterprises.  He had also a
branch of his business in Akron, Ohio, where he built the first of the
large-stone business blocks which adorn that city.  Upon the formation of
the Portage Canal and Manufacturing Company at Akron, he became an active
member and a large stockholder, and was at different times the treasurer of
the company, and its fiscal agent in New York City, with almost absolute
discretionary power in its fiscal concerns.

  In 1835 he closed his affairs in Ohio and returned to his business in
Detroit, but remained there only two years, and in 1837, at the
solicitation of a number of this prominent people of Flint, he removed to
that city, to spend (as it proved) the remainder of his long life.  Having
always been prosperous in his business affairs, he had, at the time of his
settlement here, in addition to the landed estate of his wife, a large
amount of ready money, and with this he engaged in trade and in banking at
Flint.  He also built extensively, and contributed to the progress of the
city in various ways, one instance of which was his furnishing of the money
to start the publication of Flint's first newspaper, the "Flint River
Gazette".

  Although Mr. Payne had already been engaged in active business in other
places for a full quarter of a century before he came to make his home in
Flint, he yet passed half his whole life (lacking only a few months) here,
and became a citizen of such prominence as to make his name inseparable
from the annals of the city.

  He died at his residence in Flint, Jan. 31, 1877, aged eighty-two years.

  "The Citizen", of Flint, in its next issue after the death of Mr. Payne,
said of him: "His dust and his memory are all that remain of one who for
nearly half a century filled one of the foremost places in the history of
this county and city. . . . He was uncommonly generous of the goods with
which fortune had endowed him.  As instances of this spirit may be
mentioned that he donated to the Catholics an acre of land, as the site of
their present church; also a tract of land on Detroit Street, for a burial-
ground; likewise to the Baptist church and the Garland Street Methodist
Episcopal church the lots now occupied by those societies respectively; and
not long since a lot, valued at five hundred dollars, for the benefit of
the new Episcopal church.  He was a man of remarkable kindness of heart,
amounting to almost womanly tenderness on witnessing distress; of the
highest integrity of character, and of broad literary culture, with a great
love for books.  He was a religious man, though not a professor of religion
in any denomination."

  Mr. Payne was, at the time of his death, one of the oldest members of the
Masonic Fraternity in the State, having become a Mason in Detroit, in 1818,
in what was then known as Zion Lodge, No. 62, of the Territory of Michigan.
When Washington Chapter, No. 15, was instituted at Flint, he was one of its
charter members, and its first King.  Subsequently he received the orders
of the Red Cross, Knights Templar, and Knights of Malta.  He was also one
of the original, and the last surviving member of the Mechanics' Institute
of Detroit.

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