The Hendrick E. Paine Family included some of the earliest New England settlers in northeast Ohio. The family was known both for the many family members who became military officers and for the political dominance which the Paines exercised in northeast Ohio during much of the first half of the nineteenth century. The following are short biographical sketches of the more prominent members of the Paine family.
Early in 1800, Edward Paine led a group of settlers from New York to Ohio where he founded Painesville. In October of that year he was elected to the territorial legislature, receiving 38 votes out of 42 votes cast. He died at the age of 96 in 1841.
During the summer of 1818 a sawmill was built. Soon afterwards an ashery was constructed. In 1826 Samuel Phelps proposed to Hendrick Paine the building of a forge and furnace. Mr. Phelps agreed to supply the capital provided Mr. Paine consented to supervise the work. Construction began that year but Mr. Phelps soon died and the work was suspended for a year. However, the construction resumed and the project was completed in the fall of 1827. The sawmill and the forge employed many men in the surrounding area.
In 1822 Hendrick Paine was commissioned as a captain in the Ohio militia and four years later he received his commission as a colonel. He also led a faction in local politics known as the "Paine Party" and held the office of justice of the peace continuously from 1823 to 1829.
In 1842 he sold his holdings to his sons and moved back to Painesville. In 1849 he moved to Fairport where he was appointed keeper of the lighthouse, a position he soon resigned because of ill health.
Eventually, all of Hendrick Paine's children, except for Henry, moved to Warren County, Illinois. In 1855 Hendrick Paine followed his children and went to live with his widowed daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth E. Smith, in Momouth, Warren County, Illinois. In 1859 he celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary in Warren County, Illinois.
Throughout his life Henry Paine held a number of township and county offices. At the time of his death he was both justice of the peace and a county commissioner. Thrown from a buggy on October 24, 1866, he died one week later.
The Hendrick E. Paine Family Papers, 1787-1941 and undated, consist of correspondence concerned primarily with family history; biographical essays and data on various members of the Paine family; family trees and charts; genealogical information and biographical material on various branches of the Paine family; legal papers, including court dockets, property transfers, deeds, wills and papers related to their execution, and court orders issued by Henry Paine in his capacity as justice of the peace; financial papers, including receipts, bills, account books, day books, blotters, and ledgers; newspaper clippings; and a subject file consisting of miscellaneous material on the Fourteenth Independent Batter (light artillery), the Lake County commissioners, and LeRoy Township.
The collection's primary value is genealogical. However, the collection does have value for the historian. The essays written about Hendrick Paine and his life in LeRoy, the subject file, the financial papers, and the court dockets may be useful to the social historian and those interested in the history of Lake County, Ohio, in the nineteenth century. The court dockets may aid the historian in determining the type of conflicts which were resolved through the local judicial system. The financial papers document the commodities purchased by people in northeastern Ohio during the first half of the nineteenth century as well as general features of farm life.
The collection is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
All photographs have been removed to PG 91 Clague, Kewish, and Paine Family Photographs.
The researcher should also consult MS 3864 Kewish Family Papers.
Processed by David Gaynon in 1974.
None.
A list of family branches as arranged in the family branch file and several family trees are available at the Reference Desk of the WRHS Research Library.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 3492 Hendrick E. Paine Family Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gifts of Mrs. Karen Henderson of Madison, Ohio, in 1970 and 1972.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.