Rev. Francis Marion Paine

SOURCE: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889
Contributed by Michael Brown
18 Oct 1998

---------------------------------------------------------------------- CRAWFORD COUNTY
page 1183

Rev. Francis Marion Paine, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was born in Giles County, Tenn., July 4, 1822, and is a son of Gabriel Wilson and Mary (Hanners) Paine. The father was born in Hawkins County, Tenn., in 1801, and the mother in North Carolina in 1804. They were married in 1819, in Giles County, Tenn., where they had been brought up by their parents from early youth. The subject of this sketch removed with his parents to Hardin County, Tenn., in 1829, and in 1834 to Union County, Ill., where he grew up to manhood; and June 25, 1840, he was united in marriage to Miss Susanah Rich, youngest daughter of Thomas and Catharine (Noah) Rich. The grandfather of our subject, John Paine, was a native of North Carolina, a relative and great admirer of the noted skeptical writer, Thomas Paine. He was bold and adventurous, fond of the western wilds. In company with many of his relatives and personal friends, he crossed the Cumberland Mountains and made settlements at an early day on the rich lands of Elk River-now a part of Middle Tennessee. Having the advantage of a fair education for his day, he engaged in the service of capitalists as surveyor in locating Revolutionary soldier land warrants on the rich lands of the yet newer territory of West Tennessee, where he made his home later in life, and died at an advanced age. He and his wife were both of English descent. Mrs. Paine, wife of our subject, is of German extraction on her father's side; was born in Jackson County, Ala., February 24, 1824, and is the mother of eleven children, eight daughters and three sons, of whom four daughters and one son only are now living. Our subject, the eldest of nine children, had in early life only such educational advantages as were afforded by the common schools, first of Tennessee and later of Southern [p.1183] Illinois. He engaged when quite young in teaching, and while teaching, in 1844, became a student of medicine. Through much self-denial and dint of energy and perseverance, he became a respectable scholar in the higher branches of the English classics. In 1854 he gave up his private school (Franklin Academy) in Sebastian County, Ark., to take charge of the Fort Coffee Academy, a mission school in the Indian Territory, under the auspices of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He continued his connection with the missionary work among the Indians, teaching and preaching-sometimes acting as general superintendent of a school and mission station. When the war came up, in 1861, he was superintendent of Fort Coffee and Newhope Academy, and had the pastoral charge of Fort Coffee and Newhope District as presiding elder. In 1863, on account of the desolations of the country from the war, he was necessitated to go to Texas with his family for safety and subsistence. He settled his family at Paris, Lamar Co., Tex., and engaged in the practice of medicine to support himself and family; in the meantime he became pastor of the Paris Station, Methodist Episcopal Church, South. At the close of the war, his father having died at Clarksville, Ark., it became necessary that he should take care of his aged mother. This eventuated in his removal back to Arkansas, which was consummated in 1867. This change, and the additional care of his mother, together with his large and expensive family, made it somewhat necessary for him to give up for a time the active pastorate, and become secular in his calling. His mother having died in 1871, he again entered the active pastorate of his church in 1872. In 1873 he was elected by the Arkansas Annual Conference one of the delegates to the General Conference, which met in the city of Louisville, Ky., in May, 1874. He was at that time presiding elder of the Dardanelle District. He served in this capacity for three terms, and then as station preacher in several charges. Finally, however, from the increasing infirmities of age, together with the effects of long and continued hard labor, he felt it his duty to ask the conference to permit him to retire from the activities of a Methodist itinerant minister, and occupy the less laborious position of a local elder in the church, which was granted him cheerfully by his conference. This was done at Ozark, Ark., in November, 1886. Our subject having homesteaded 160 acres of the Government, besides some other lands bought of private individuals, has settled on the 'Frisco line (St. Louis and Fort Smith branch) of railway, seven miles north of Van Buren, at Little Station, where he is now devoting his time and energies in the culture of fruits generally, but more especially that of strawberries, grapes and peaches; and having made the culture of these remunerative, and having considerable quantities of apples, pears, plums and cherries in young orchards coming on, it is but reasonable to conclude that, with the continuance of his present health and vigor of body and mind a few years longer, he will have a handsome yearly income from these to support comfortably himself and wife in their old age.