"One of the best known businessmen and worthy native sons of the city of Clinton, Vermillion County, is James Paine, who has for a long lapse of years managed successfully a grocery store here and carried on other lines of business in a manner that shows him to be a man of unusual industrial ability. He has lived to see and take a leading part in the wonderful growth of Clinton county and vicinity, and he is in every way deserving of the high esteem in which he is held by all.
"Mr. Paine was born on January 22, 1845, at Blackman and Second Streets, Clinton and here he lived till he was nine years old, then removed to a farm a few miles from Clinton where he lived until he was twenty-three. He was educated in the common schools, his first teacher being Anna Hathaway, who taught in old Temperance hall. He is the son of John and Charlotte (Bright) Paine. The Bright family came here from Virginia in 1832, they and the Harrison family making the long overland trip, and they settled on Brulett's creek, about five miles west of Clinton. James Paine was married in 1866 to Narcissus Wright, daughter of John and ----(Nichol) Wright. Mr. Wright came from Cauyga county, New York, and settled near the Bunsen mine, in an early day.
"James Paine began life for himself as a farmer, following that line of endeavor in his native county until 1870, when he removed to Kansas, where he continued general farming for a period of fourteen years, meeting with desirable success as he had previously done. He again went to Kansas in 1898, spending eight years, and then returning to Indiana, he turned his attention to the grocery business in Clinton and this he has continued to the present time with ever-growing success, having long enjoyed a large trade with the town and surrounding country, always carrying a large and carefully bought stock of staple and fancy groceries at all seasons.
"To James Paine and wife were born five children, names as follows: Henry, John R. and Frank, all of Clinton; Fred, who died when fourteen years old and Grace and Howard who are at home."