J. H. Paine ("Miser" Paine)

Biography

J. H. Paine was a composer and critic of considerable ability and a personal friend of C. Frank Chickering, who was generally known as 'Miser' Paine and gladly accepted Chickering's hospitality and aid at all times, being considered a poor man by all who knew him. One day he brought Chickering a bundle wrapped in a bandanna handkerchief and asked him to place it in his safe; Chickering, assuming it held manuscripts of Paine's compositions, agreed. About seventeen years later Paine died without a will, and when the bundle was opened in the presence of his legal representative it was found to contain over $400,000 worth of bonds and currency, which Chickering turned over to the lawyer, who had to track down Paine's distant relatives to distribute the inheritance. From Spillane (1890): J. H. Paine, nicknamed 'Miser Paine,' was a grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence who, for nearly eighteen years, kept roughly four hundred thousand dollars in bonds and currency hidden in a dirty bandana handkerchief inside a Chickering & Sons safe in New York. This hoard was unknown even to his friends, and he lived and died in abject poverty, leaving no clue to the accumulation or its whereabouts. Upon Paine's death, C. F. Chickering immediately summoned Paine's lawyer and revealed the astonishing discovery. Spillane presents the episode as a striking testament to the integrity of the house of Chickering & Sons, which had safeguarded the fortune without disclosing or touching it for so many years.

Highlights

• Personal friend of C. Frank Chickering, generally known as 'Miser' Paine and considered a poor man by all who knew him
• Left a bandanna-wrapped bundle in Chickering's safe for safekeeping that, on Paine's death about 17 years later, was found to contain over $400,000 in bonds and currency
• Known as 'Miser Paine'; a grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence
• Secretly stored about $400,000 in bonds and currency, wrapped in a bandana, in a Chickering & Sons safe in New York for nearly eighteen years
• Lived and died in abject poverty despite his hidden wealth; the fortune was revealed by C. F. Chickering only after Paine's death

Sources

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 275.

Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte (1890), p. 268.

Public domain.