Note Type
Historical NoteNote
Bishop Robert Paine was born in Person County, NC, on November 12, 1799, the son of James Paine and Nancy Williams Paine. In 1814, the family moved to Giles County. In 1818, he was admitted into the Methodist Episcopal ministry. In 1821, at Salem, Tenn., he was ordained a deacon by Bishop William McKendree, the first native American Methodist bishop, and in 1823 was ordained an elder. He served as president of LaGrange College in Alabama. In 1846, he was elected and ordained a bishop in the church. He sided with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South when the church split as he owned significant amount of land and enslaved people. He founded Paine College in 1882, the year he died, in Aberdeen, Mississippi. He married three times, to Susannah Charlotte Beck, Amanda Malvina Shaw, and Mary Eliza Millwater.