Under Construction

This is very much a "site under construction". That is we are still building it. Currently we have about 1000 individual descendants of the original Joel Pain and Mary Gould but putting them up on a private website is a daunting task. Please bear with us. We will get there.

That said, please email us if we haven't talked before. Generally, if we've "spoken" to you previously, your information will be in the Extended Family Tree. Its just that it hasn't been transferred to the website yet.

Some History

Prior to about March 2005, there were many independent researchers looking for the history of our Payne family. Then serendipity intervened. Both Debby and I found MSN Groups' Victorian genealogy site. Prior to that I'd been able to confirm that Charles Payne (1822) and George Payne (1824) were brothers through Graham Payne of Somerset. Debby had been able to link the other 3 siblings, RoseAnn, John Edward and William to George. We'd done it. We'd found the link to the entire family. We thought the hard work was done our Payne Genealogical "Brick Wall" had come tumbling down. Little did we know!!

Debby and I spent the next year alternately tearing our hair out, biting our fingernails, hunting obscure clues, making many phone calls and writing endless emails. Our forebears had made things incredibly difficult by using and re-using the same given names; sometimes within the same family in the same generation. They got over the problem by using pet names but initially we didn't have access to that. The number of times we mixed people and generations up were legion. But we think it's OK now.

Additional Contributors

These are almost too numerous to name but some that stand out immediately are Coral, Eric, Don, Jacqui, Graham, Alan and David. Those them and those of you whose names are currently on the tip of my tongue please accept our grateful thanks.