Background
Charles Paine was born on April 15, 1799 in Williamstown, Vermont, United States. He was the fifth of the eight children of Elijah and Sarah (Porter) Paine.
Businessman manufacturer politician
Charles Paine was born on April 15, 1799 in Williamstown, Vermont, United States. He was the fifth of the eight children of Elijah and Sarah (Porter) Paine.
Charles Paine entered Phillips Exeter Academy in 1813, and in 1816, following the family tradition, Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1820. Four years of college life proved his capacity for gay and joyous companionship rather than for serious study.
About 1820 Charles Paine settled at Northfield, Vermont, where he soon became the manager of his father's woollen-mills. Business responsibilities and the close contact with the strong personality of his father brought out his more solid qualities. He, too, became a model of punctuality, exactness, and strict honesty in business dealings, but with somewhat less of sternness than the older man displayed. His enterprise and his initiative in the adoption of improved machinery shortly brought increased prosperity to his factory, now organized on a large scale. Like his father, he interested himself in farming and stock breeding. Here also financial success followed. Meanwhile, he was taking part in state politics. For one term he was a member of the House of Representatives (1828 - 1829).
After standing for the governorship as a Whig in 1835, he was elected to that office in 1841 and again in 1842. Like the other Whigs of his region, Paine was a strong protectionist. Unlike the majority of them, he was so incensed by President Tyler's failure to follow the party leaders that he urged a constitutional amendment not merely to limit the president to one term but to deprive him of the veto power, "the only monarchical feature in our form of government". He failed to secure a geological survey and a reorganization of the school system in the state, but he did introduce a new and more thorough system of accounting by state officers. After his retirement as governor, he devoted the rest of his life to railway promotion. Efforts, under charters of 1832 and 1835, to build a railroad through the center of the state had failed from lack of financial support. Paine now became the moving spirit in a new endeavor.
The Vermont Central Railroad Company was organized in 1845 with Paine as president of the board of directors. It was intended that the road, crossing the state from northwest to southeast, should form a part of a great trunk line connecting Boston with Chicago by way of northern New York and the Lakes. With the aid of capitalists in Boston, where the financial direction was retained, Paine succeeded in completing the road, December 31, 1849. Unfortunately, and partly through Paine's fault, the railroad left Montpelier, the capital, on a side line, as it did Burlington after connection was made with Montreal. It did, however, pass through Paine's hilltop village of Northfield. Despite his determined efforts, the road was not a financial success. In 1852 it passed into the hands of receivers and Paine in the last year of his life turned to the promotion of a railroad to the Pacific over a southern route. During explorations for this purpose he died of dysentery at Waco, Texas.
Charles Paine was a member of Whig party.
As a boy, Charles Paine was a high-spirited, adventurous boy, more interested in sport than study.
Charles Paine was never married.