Fortune Stewart
& Rebecca Payne

Fortune Stewart and Rebecca Payne are the earliest ancestors this family can name. They made their home at Williamsport, in the part of Hardy County that became Grant County in 1866. Sixteen of their children reached adulthood, and five Stewart daughters married five Hilliard brothers, creating a wide network of descendants across West Virginia and beyond.

Rebecca Payne was born about 1825 to 1830 in Virginia. DNA now connects this family to the Payne family, free people of color who can be documented by name. Rebecca’s father, William Payne (born about 1798 to 1802, died 1881), and her grandfather, Humphrey Payne (1775 to 1852), appeared in the Virginia courts, from Frederick County through Hardy County, to renew their free-person certificates alongside other free people of color. A free woman named Rebecca Payne also appears in the Hardy County court renewing her freedom papers, and she is most likely Jerrie’s great-grandmother. The exact link between this Rebecca and William Payne is not yet proven by a single document; it rests on the DNA cluster and the surrounding record.

Because a child followed the condition of its mother, Rebecca could have been free only if her mother was free. Family tradition holds that Rebecca’s mother was an enslaved woman named Flora, born about 1800. That tradition is not yet documented, but a Flora born about 1800 appears in the 1870 census in the same Williamsport household as the Payne family, and county records show a Flora supported for years as a pauper in the care of Benjamin Cunningham. A separate, enslaved and often ailing Rebecca appears in the Warden estate records; the evidence indicates she is a different woman, not the free Rebecca Payne of this line.

Fortune was remembered as born outside the United States, possibly in the Caribbean, a man who spoke French or Spanish and kept foreign coins. The surviving records and the DNA evidence now allow these memories to be tested, confirmed, and refined.