Daniel Payne
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Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, D.D., L.L.D. was a clergyman, educator, and author.
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[edit] Origin and Education
Daniel Payne was born in Charleston, South Carolina on February 24, 1811. His parents, London and Martha Payne both died before he reached maturity. While his great aunt assumed his care, the Minor's Moralist Society assisted his early education.
According to Payne's own scholarship, the state of South Carolina enacted a law on April 1, 1835, which in part read, "And if any persons of color or slave shall keep any school or other place of instruction for teaching any slave or free person of color to read or write, such free person of color or slave shall be liable to the same fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment..." Payne sailed from Charleston in May 1835 to Philadelphia in search of further education. He completed study at the Gettysburg Seminary in Pennsylvania. After ministry in the Lutheran denomination, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A M E) in 1842.
[edit] As Bishop and President
In 1848 Bishop William Paul Quinn named Payne as the historiographer of the AME Church. In 1852 Rev. Payne was elected as Bishop in the AME denomination. Along with Rev. Lewis Woodson, two other African Americans, and several white clergymen, he served on the founding board of directors of Wilberforce University in Ohio. Wilberforce was established in 1856 to provide collegiate education to African Americans. The institution closed for two years during the Civil War. When it reopened Payne was named president, becoming the first African American college president. He traveled twice to Europe and during the Civil War to parts of the South under the control of the Union Army, preparing for the expansion of the AME Church into the South.
Payne married in 1847, but his first wife died during the first year of marriage from complications from childbirth. He married Eliza Clark of Cincinnati in 1854.
[edit] As Historian
Payne completed Recollections of Seventy Years in 1888 and The History of the A. M. E. Church in 1891. He died on November 2, 1893. The Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio is named in his honor.
[edit] Further Reading
Howard Gregg, History of the AME Church
