John Howard Payne

John Howard Payne (June 9, 1791 – April 10, 1852) was an American actor, poet, playwright, and writer who had nearly two decades of a theatrical career and success in London. He is today most remembered as the creator of "Home! Sweet Home!", a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States and the English-speaking world. Its popularity was revived during the American Civil War, as troops on both sides embraced it.

After his return to the United States in 1832, Payne spent time with the Cherokee in the Southeast and interviewed many elders. Intending to write about them, he amassed material about their culture, language and society, which have been useful to scholars. But his published theory that suggested their origin as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel has been thoroughly disproved. At that time, European Americans were still strongly influenced by a Biblical basis of history in trying to understand origins of the peoples in the Americas.

Friends helped gain Payne's appointment in 1842 as American Consul to Tunis, where he served for nearly 10 years until his death. Although he was first buried there, in 1883 his remains were returned to the United States and buried in Washington, D.C. This was paid for by philanthropist W. W. Corcoran. In 1970 Payne was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

John Howard Payne was born in New York City on June 9, 1791, one of seven sons among nine children. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where his father headed a school. The family also spent time at his grandfather's colonial-era house in East Hampton, New York, which was later preserved in honor of Payne. As a youth, Payne showed precocious dramatic talent, but his father tried to discourage that path. After the death of an older son, his father installed young Payne, age 13, in his late brother's position at the same accountants' firm in New York, but Payne showed he had no mind for commerce.

Payne's interest in theater was irrepressible. He published the first issue of The Thespian Mirror, a journal of theater criticism, at age 14. Soon after that, he wrote his first play, Julia: or the Wanderer, a comedy in five acts. Its language was racy, and it closed quickly. But Payne's work on The Thespian Mirror had caught the attention of William Coleman, the editor of the New-York Evening Post. He believed that Payne showed promise to contribute to the city's cultural future, and sought a sponsor to support Payne's college education. John E. Seaman, a wealthy New Yorker, took on that financial responsibility. Columbia University was ruled out because of proximity to the distraction of young actresses, and even the College of New Jersey (as Princeton was then known) was considered too close to the city. They selected Union College in Schenectady, New York. Novelist Charles Brockden Brown, an active promoter of New York City, accompanied the young Payne upstate as far as Albany.

Payne started a college paper called the Pastime, which he kept up for several issues. When he was 16, his mother died, and the academy run by his father was failing. Payne, unhappy in his "exile" at Union, left at Easter to be with his family. He told his grieving father that he was dropping out of college to pursue a stage career. On February 24, 1809, he made his debut at the old Park Theatre in New York in the eponymous role of Young Norval. Scoring a brilliant success, he went on to become the first American actor to play Hamlet; regarded as a prodigy, he was regaled as a home town wonder when he returned to Boston, among other major cities where he toured. His appearances as Romeo to Eliza Poe, Edgar Allan Poe's mother, won particular acclaim, and he favored her to play opposite him in comedies. But despite his success, he had difficulty getting paid by the theaters. In a brief interval away from the theatre, he founded the Athenaeum, a circulating library and reading room.

Payne was friends with Sam Colt and his brother John C. Colt; the latter was accused of murdering printer Samuel Adams. Payne was a character witness at John Colt's murder trial. Colt was convicted and sentenced to death, but Payne acted as a witness in his wedding ceremony to Caroline Henshaw, which took place on the morning of Colt's scheduled execution.

Befriended by the English tragedian George Frederick Cooke, who appeared with Payne in King Lear at New York's Park Theatre, Payne decided to seek recognition in London's theatre world, and he sailed across the Atlantic in February 1813.