October 7, 2021 / Joanne Yeck

Payne’s Landing, Part IV

Courtesy Find A Grave, Photos by Brian Gallagher.

In March of 1959, Buckingham County historian Lulie Patteson published an article in Charlottesville’s Daily Progress detailing the history of Payne’s Landing. At that time hardly a trace was left of a once busy community.

Click here to catch up: Payne’s Landing, Part I

Lulie Patteson concludes her article, writing:

Only a chimney of brick remains of the first home. From the debris left at the site the home seems to have had four rooms. It was a two-story dwelling. A two-room frame house still stands nearby. Later the new house (the one now dilapidated) was built. It led to the small, gray house which was used as a kitchen.

Family history reveals that a runway from the house to the kitchen shed was built so Mrs. Payne, who lost a leg in middle life, could scoot her wheelchair to the kitchen.

One barn now stands where there used to be many barns and stables for the working animals.

A large family of children were reared here and their descendants are widely scattered over Virginia and elsewhere. N. T. Payne was attacked by pneumonia on a timber trip to Sussex or Southampton counties (the exact place is uncertain). He died away from home. Mrs. Payne lived to an old age and was cared for by a devoted daughter after the other children had left home.

On a lovely slope above the home location is one of the most attractive private cemeteries ever seen in a rural section. Here great maple trees guard the graves of Mr. and Mrs. N. T. Payne, their children and their grandchildren.