Cheesy Grits: Finding Schoolmaster Daniel Payne's First School in Charleston

Bishop Daniel A. Payne (1811-1893) had two great loves: his church and his students. He served both throughout his life as the first historiographer of the AME Church, then as a Bishop, and then as the first president of Wilberforce College (now University), the first Black-owned and -operated college in the United States.

Bishop Payne was free-born in Charleston, orphaned at a young age and raised by a grand-aunt. The Minors' Moralist Society, which was set up by members of the Brown Fellowship Society for the education of orphans, provided Payne with his first taste of schooling. He demonstrated sufficient aptitude and ability that he soon came under the direct tutelage of Schoolmaster Thomas S. Bonneau. When he reached the age of twelve, he was apprenticed out, as was the custom, first to a carpenter and then to a tailor.

But Payne soon realized that what he really wanted to do was teach. His opportunity came when in 1829, at age 19, he was asked by Caesar Wright, a Free Person of Color, to teach his three children at his home on Tradd Street. He accepted, and was soon teaching not only the Wright children but three enslaved people as well.

Within a year, his reputation and the demand for his services had risen to the point that Wright's house could no longer contain his students, and it was then that Mr. Robert Howard built a new school for Schoolteacher Daniel Payne in his backyard at 80 Anson Street. Payne presided over that school until 1835, when teaching children of African descent was outlawed by the State of South Carolina.

Payne left Charleston and would go on to attend seminary in Pennsylvania and then receive an appointment as the first historiographer for the A.M.E. Church. He became a Bishop in the A.M.E. Church and—always the educator—would lead the effort that culminated in the establishment of the first African-American-owned and -operated college in the United States, Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, OH; Payne became its first president. There is much more to his life, but that suffices as a brief introduction.

Jane and I had the opportunity recently to take Prof. Damon Fordham's fine tour of Charleston which he calls "Lost Stories of Black Charleston." During the tour, we passed by Tradd Street, and Prof. Fordham mentioned Bishop Payne and his school, but added as an apparent afterthought "Nobody knows quite which house it was in..." or words to that effect—and my proverbial antennae went up. ("Come Watson, come! The game is afoot!")

After we had returned home, I started looking for information about Caesar Wright of Tradd Street around 1830 to see if I could identify the location of Daniel Payne's first school.

My first stop was the 1830 federal census, where Charleston's Ward 2 shows a "Cosar Wright" as the head of a household. Alas, the house numbers aren't included in that census, nor even the street names. But this Wright seems a good candidate to be the right Wright, as all of the occupants of the household are either "Slaves" or "Free Colored Persons." No "Whites."

1830 Federal census for Charleston, SC. Ward 2, Sheet 33
"Cosar" Wright is the third name from the top.

I couldn't, however, find a "Wright" that looked right in the 1830 Charleston City directory, and so I was stuck.

Then I thought about the method census enumerators use: they are typically systematic, going down the street on one side at a time from one house to the next and next, and so on. They normally don't make random jumps around a neighborhood; thus, names listed next to each other in the census have an excellent chance of having been neighbors.

So I made a list of the names immediately above and below "Cosar Wright" in the 1830 census and started to cross-reference them in the 1830 Charleston City Directory.

Here is what that list of "Cosar" Wright's apparent neighbors looks like with addition of the addresses given in the city directory:

Mrs. A.G. Holmes -- 126 Tradd St.
Justus Angell -- 124 Tradd St.
Cosar Wright -- [no listing]
Lionel M. Kennedy -- [professional address only listed] res. Tradd St.
William Lowndes -- [Mrs. Wm., widow] 118 Tradd St.
Barnard E. Bee -- 114 Tradd St.

If the numbering is sequential, then the pattern emerges. "Cosar" Wright's address—and therefore the likely address of Bishop Daniel Payne's first school—appears to be 122 Tradd St.

So what can we do to confirm this supposition? Well, Wright's neighbor Lionel Kennedy was one of the magistrates who presided over the Denmark Vesey trial, so his residential address should be documented somewhere. Finding it would provide more confirmation that Payne's first school at Wright's house was at 122 Tradd St.

But there's still another caveat: Charleston houses have historically changed numbers, i.e., what was once 100 might become 200, or similar. I learned just how this worked during this same trip: the address of the original Thorne homestead is given in several places as 1 Cumberland Street. If you look at a current map, you would expect to find this address at the foot of Cumberland where it intersects Concord Street—and you would be mistaken, as Concord Street didn't exist yet when the first Thornes, John Gardiner and his son John Stocks, lived at 1 Cumberland.

Current map of Charleston SC showing Cumberland St. extending beyond E. Bay to Concord.

But it gets still more complicated: a librarian in the South Carolina Room at the Charleston County Public Library on Calhoun St. "walked" me through the history of Cumberland St. Initially, it ran just one block: from Meeting St. (just at the left edge above) to Church St. Around 1838, it was extended to E. Bay St., and in the process eliminated Amen St—although Amen Street survives as Amen Street Fish & Raw Bar at the corner of Cumberland and E. Bay St. (The shrimp corndogs on the menu sound interesting; Jane is on a she-crab soup expedition lately, though, and they have that listed, too.)

So my initial search for "1 Cumberland" at the corner of Cumberland and Concord was off by three blocks and at least 180 years: before 1838, "1 Cumberland" was at what is now the corner of Cumberland and Church Streets—and it's now a parking lot.

Tradd Street would need to be researched the same way to make sure of the location of 122 Tradd Street in 1830: the possible site of Bishop Daniel Payne's first school.

Shall we order the historic marker?