This collection is made up of ten energetic and at times impolite letters from sailor George S. Payne to his cousin Fayette W. Pierce, 1838-1845, and two miscellaneous incoming letters to Pierce. Payne wrote six letters from areas around New York City, both on land and shipboard (the brig Erie, bark Chancellor, and schooner Laurel), describing his leisure activities, attendance at church services, preparations for sailing, and a robbery of items on his boat. On arriving back at New York from a voyage to Buenos Aries, Argentina, in June 1842, he vividly described political assassinations and executions under General Juan Manuel de Rosas. The same year, he wrote a diatribe against the Thanksgiving holiday, focusing on the inhumane treatment of farm animals. Payne suffered from rheumatism and spent part of 1845 receiving treatment near Tampa, Florida, and recovering in St. Louis, Missouri. One of the remaining letters to Pierce, from J. F. Payne in 1857, includes a vivid and poetic description of travel to Florence, Nebraska.
Please see the box and folder listing below for details about the contents of each letter.
George Silliman Payne was born on November 3, 1816, to parents John and Sarah Durand Payne in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut. Payne had a five-year sailing career aboard the ship Niantic, 1835 to 1840, when the vessel was engaged in Far East trade. Payne made four voyages, to Canton (Guangzhou), Linton, Whampoa, Hong Kong, and Manila, and kept detailed diaries of his experiences (located at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park). In late 1841/early 1842, Payne sailed to Buenos Aires on board the barque Chancellor. By early 1843, despite his at times incapacitating rheumatism, he was aboard the schooner Laurel at New York. George Payne became a Captain in the U.S. Army and, by 1845, found himself continuing to struggle with his rheumatism outside of Tampa, Florida. After a brief stint in St. Louis, Missouri, Payne returned to Florida, where he worked as a clerk at a trading post on the Charlo-popka-hatchee-chee Creek in Seminole Indian territory, in the years between the second and third Seminole wars. On July 17, 1849, five Seminoles attacked the trading post, killing George S. Payne and another clerk, Dempsey Whiddon, and ratcheting up tensions between the U.S. and Seminole Nation. Wishing to avoid the reigniting of hostilities, the Seminole Indians turned the five offending men over to the U.S. Army. The U.S. nevertheless established a short-lived fort near the destroyed trading post and re-named the creek "Paynes Creek."
