Barber County Kansas

E.W. "Wylie" Payne

E. W. Payne, banker, stock-dealer and grower, was born in Missouri in 1847, and reared in the agricultural profession, and received a business education. He was left an orphan at the age of six years. He worked on farms in different places, and attended school winters until sixteen years of age, when he went to Nebraska City, Nebraska, where he was engaged in the freighting business two years.

He then returned to Missouri, and purchased a farm, which he operated until 1877, when he came to Kansas, and settled in Comanche County, and engaged in the stock business, where continued four years, after which he came to Medicine Lodge, and organized the Medicine Valley Bank in 1882, of which he was elected president.

In 1876, he was elected to the Legislature of Missouri.

In April of 1880, Mr. Payne associated himself with Messrs. Hunter, Evans & Co., of St. Louis, R. W. Phillips of Chicago, and several other men, for the purpose of ranching cattle, and now controls a ranch forty-five miles square, and known as the Comanche Pool. The company now have about 51,000 head of cattle on their ranch. Mr. Payne is Treasurer, and is one of the Directors of the association, also individual ranch of 1,000 acres deeded land with range privileges, stocked with 900 cattle, which is under fence. The company own about 8,000 acres of land deeded. The increase of this monstrous herd is about 15,000 annually.

Mr. Payne owns a pasture of 320 acres adjoining the town of Medicine Lodge; owns five and a half acres in the town, owns a bank building, and was one of the organizers of the Live-Stock Strip Association, and is one of the Directors of the same; is editor and proprietor of the Barber County Index, an eight-page eight column paper, devoted to live-stock interests, which is Democratic in politics.

Mr. Payne is a member of the Freemasons. In 1866, he was married to Miss Susan A. Payne, of Missouri, by whom he has nine children - Edward B., Mary A., Estella, H., Charles T., John M., Eliza H., Laura, Lefa T. and William W.

-- History of the State of Kansas: Counties, Towns and Villages., A.T. Andreas, Chicago, 1883.


E. W. "Wylie" Payne died from a gunshot wound received during a robbery of the Medicine Valley Bank, April 30, 1884. - The Medicine Lodge Cresset, Thursday, May 1, 1884.


Also see:

Attempted Bank Robbery in Medicine Lodge: Geo. Geppert, Cashier, Shot Down in Cold Blood, and E. W. Payne, President, Dangerously Wounded.
The Hazelton Express, May 8, 1884.

Two Killed In Medicine Lodge Bank Robbery (in 1884)
Barber County Index, May 11, 1944.

Memoirs of Phoebe (Rogers) Gibson:
The Early Days of Barber County, Kansas

Barber County Index, May 16, 1929. (Includes an account of the capture of the robbers.)

Bank Robbery - Medicine Lodge, Kansas - 1884   This is an excellent illustrated account of the attempted robbery.

Orlando Vernon Lytle, one of the members of the posse which captured the robbers.

Marshal Henry Brown's Winchester Rifle (In the collection of Kansas Museum of History)

Henry Brown: A Kansas Portrait

Henry Newton Brown: A Brief Biography

Henry Newton Brown: Memorial in Caldwell, Kansas

Letter from Mary Emma (Strayer) Hughes to her mother, Harriett Ales (Howard) Strayer about the Medicine Lodge Bank Robbery, 4 May 1884

Evansville, Comanche County, Kansas   Headquarters of the Comanche Pool.




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