[CIVIL WAR] Eugene B. Payne (1835-1910). Two page letter written in pencil, Illinois Legislature, House of Representative, Springfield, Illinois, 1867. This is Payne’s own retained copy of his letter to J.F. Farnsworth, congressman from Illinois and Union general. Payne is expressing regret that a Dr. [Moses] Evans was recommended as Post Master of Waukengan, Illinois. Payne recommends, instead, a Major. Clarkson. Says that the railroad men want him in the post; says he is a rich man and does not need the office. Says Clarkson needs the job. According to the New York Times, April 8, 1910, Payne was born in Seneca Falls, N.Y. on April 15, 1835. But in 1836 his family, led by his father, Thomas Hubbard Payne, bought land in northwest Fremont Township, Lake County Illinois. The large Payne family played crucial political and economic roles in the development of Lake County, as described in John J. Halsey’s 1912 History of Lake County, Illinois (Waukegan, 1912, 432-51). As the son of a pioneer family, Payne studied in local schools and graduated from the Waukegan High School (Open Library undocumented online article on General Payne). In 1860 he was graduated from the law school of Northwestern University, a member of the first class, and was “admitted to the bar that same year,” according to the Times obituary. At the beginning of the Civil War he organized at Waukegan, Illinois, the first company of Union infantry troops in Illinois (37th Illinois Infantry Regiment) and he served with them until September of 1864 when he was discharged due to his dibilitating malaria (background note, Payne collection, Clements Library, U. of Michigan). That fall of 1864 he was elected to the Illinois state legislature. Payne was wounded and ill following his participation in the July 1863 Vicksburg campaign and victory. His service after the spring of 1862 is documented in the Payne collection at the Clements Library, U. of Michigan. The background note for that collection states that Payne thought that the December 1862 Prairie Grove battle as equally significant to that at Pea Ridge. By the end of the war, and after playing a role in an important Rio Grande campaign and returning in early 1864 to Illinois to recruit, he was mustered out in September 1864 at the rank of Brigadier General. He was the first soldier from Lake County, Illinois to achieve the rank of general. After the war he served in the legislature to 1868, on the Republican ticket. The Times obituary says that he practiced law for seventeen years. The Open Library article reports that he lived and practiced in Waukegan and in Evanston, Illinois to 1887. In 1885 A.T. Andreas in his History of Chicago, v. 1, 203, lists Payne as a resident of Chicago, “among respected and beloved citizens” who fought with the 37th Regiment. Late in life, after retiring from the bar, Payne “was made an officer of the U.S. Pension Bureau,” Washington, DC, according to the Times obituary.

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