Museum finds: The work of handyman and dollmaker on display at ODU’s Barry
Home honors William Wesley Payne — and generations of his ancestors and descendants
NORFOLK — The Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University has a trio of prized dolls by folk artist Leo Moss.
Moss’ day job was as a handyman in the late 1800s near Macon, Georgia.
The African American laborer became a part-time artist when he started a side business of crafting white dolls with hands, heads and torsos that he bought from a traveling salesman. In the 1890s, he started making dolls that looked more like his family. He applied papier-mâché to the body parts and colored the faces and hair with chimney soot or boot dye, according to a 2019 Macon Telegraph article.
The dolls are also known for their expressive faces, plump, dimpled cheeks, sometimes pouty lips or tear-streaked
if you go
The Barry Art Museum, 1075 W. 43rd St., Norfolk; closed Monday; Tuesday - Friday, 11 a.m.- 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, noon - 5 p.m. Free admission. 757-683-6200; www.barryartmuseum.odu.edu. The collection can also be viewed online.
faces. Moss’ wife was a seamstress and clothed the dolls in leftover fabric. Moss died in 1936 and, according to the Macon Telegraph article, never made any money from his dolls. It reports that he was buried in a pauper’s grave in Illinois.
A few museums and private collectors hold the few Moss dolls known to exist. The dolls also sell for thousands.
With Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March, it’s a good time to check out some of the best films available to stream made by Black women.
One of the best film debuts of 2020 was the “Forty-Year-Old Version,” written and directed by and starring Radha Blank. An autobiographical film about a playwright dabbling in rap, Blank’s film is a funny, fresh and an incisive take on how Black art, especially made by women, is received by white critics and gatekeepers. Watch it on Netflix.
Oscar-winning actor Regina King made her directorial debut in 2020 with “One Night in Miami,” streaming on Amazon Prime. The film features an epic one-night hang sesh among Sam Cooke,
Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown. King and the actors have already been nominated for several awards.
Another awards-nominated 2020 directorial debut: Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Texas-set family drama “Miss Juneteenth,” starring Nicole Beharie in a role that finally allows her to demonstrate the full range of her enormous talent. It’s a soulful slice of life not to be missed. Watch it on Kanopy, or rent it for $2.99 on Amazon or YouTube.
2020 also marked the first year a Black woman helmed a big-budget action film, with Gina Prince-Bythewood directing the sci-fi comic book adaptation “The Old Guard,” starring Charlize Theron as an ancient warrior leading a special forces team. Exciting new stars Kiki Layne, Luca Marinelli and Marwan
Kenzari co-star across from Theron and Matthias Schoenaerts in this exciting action flick that boasts a rich lore. Watch it on Netflix.
Director Ava DuVernay has become a household name for her film work, and her distribution imprint Array has brought many independent films from creators of color to a wider audience. Watch her documentary “13th,” about the prison-industrial complex and systemic racism in America, on Netflix, or rent her Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic, “Selma,” starring David Oyelowo, for $2.99 on Amazon or YouTube.
Chinonye Chukwu’s film “Clemency” also grapples with the stark realities of the U.S. prison system, starring Alfre Woodard as a warden overseeing death row executions, facing the reality of an incarcerated man (Aldis Hodge) who desperately wants to live. Watch it on Hulu, or rent it for $3.99 on Amazon or YouTube.
Nia DaCosta made her debut with the Tessa Thompson-starring “Little Woods,” on Hulu and Kanopy, or $3.99 digital rental.
The film explores the border between Canada and a North Dakota oil boom town, where two sisters struggle to get on their feet.
On Netflix, Dee Rees’ Oscar-nominated 2017 film “Mudbound” is about two Mississippi sharecropping families, white and Black, the racist beliefs that divide them and the world war that demonstrates a different, more egalitarian way of life.
On HBO Max, watch Kasi Lemmons’ Oscar-nominated 2019 film “Harriet,” with Cynthia Erivo as abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
“Go” is an occasional travel feature spotlighting places to go and things to do within an eight-hour drive of Hampton Roads.
William Wesley Payne’s earthly remains have rested in the Shiloh Baptist Churchyard in Virginia’s Westmoreland County since 1954. An impressive stone marker engraved with his name marks his grave site.
Directly across Great House Road from the church cemetery is the entrance to Stratford Hall, the ancestral home of the Lees of Virginia: Philip Ludwell Lee, Lighthorse Harry Lee, Richard Henry Lee and Robert Edward Lee. The Lees lived at Stratford Hall for generations before debt forced them from their estate. Their political legacy to Virginia — and to the nation — needs little, if any, introduction.
William Wesley Payne and his ancestors, the Payne family, are almost totally unheralded compared to the Lees who once possessed the sprawling property.
Few records of the enslaved African American community at Stratford Hall still exist. Court records and Lee family documents provide the majority of what is known regarding the historic property’s slave community. None of the documents offer surnames. Only one African American family — the Paynes — has been distinguished as once having been connected to Stratford’s enslaved population.
On a knoll northwest of the Great House at Stratford Hall overlooking the Potomac River, the Uncle Wes Cabin stands as a heartfelt tribute to William Wesley Payne — and generations of his ancestors and descendants. The modest structure was built as a memorial to Wesley Payne for his decades of faithful service at Stratford Hall.
The name Payne may have originated with the Paynes who dwelled and are interred near Leedstown, a thriving port in colonial days, where 115 patriots met in 1766 to sign the Leedstown Resolves, a document that embodied the principles later embraced in the Declaration of Independence.
It is also feasible that the Paynes might be descendants of the slave West who was documented in Philip Ludwell Lee’s estate inventory in 1782.
William Payne (1833-1927) — the first Payne on record at Stratford Hall — was born as a slave on the plantation where he worked before and after the Civil War. He labored as a butler and a house servant for Elizabeth Storke. William married Hannah Jackson from Pope’s Creek Plantation.
Their union produced William Wesley Payne, who was grew up at Stratford Hall while Elizabeth Storke owned the property. The Stuart family inherited the plantation after Elizabeth Storke died in 1879.
Wesley Payne married Louisa Mary Johnson in 1901, and she worked as the cook for the Stuarts. The Paynes’ first home was in an outbuilding northeast of the manor house. They had 10 children.
Wesley Payne, with the exception of four years following his wife’s death, spent his entire life working at Stratford Hall.
The Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation bought Stratford
Hall from the Stuarts, and Wesley Payne began offering energetic kitchen interpretations to visitors.
When May Field Lanier, president of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, offered Wesley Payne his choice of a monument to mark his birth site at Stratford Hall, he chose to have a log cabin built on a
rise near the Great House. Following Wesley Payne’s description, a log structure similar to the cabin in which he was born was built in 1941 on the site he selected.
The cabin, built to Wesley Payne’s specifications, is not atypical of the humble cabins — cottages — used to quarter slaves on plantations throughout the South.
This rectangular structure was built of logs. The shingles are
wooden. It has a single door and two windows with shutters — no glass. It has an upscale wooden plank floor rather than the typical compacted dirt floor. The fireplace has a stick and mud chimney designed to break away from the outer wall in case of a chimney fire. The furnishings are meager: a bedstead, plank table and rough bench.
Wesley and Hannah Payne’s son Ulysses Sylvester “Joe” Payne
followed in his mother and father’s footsteps. Joe Payne, a World War II veteran, worked at Stratford Hall for 53 years. He began working for Stratford’s first resident superintendent, General B.F. Cheatham, and served as the head gardener at the historic site.
While the names of Payne family members are not as widely recognized as those familiar sobriquets of the Lee family — Richard Henry Lee, Lighthorse Harry Lee, and Robert E. Lee — they are no less a part of Stratford Hall’s history. Generations of Payne family members have “deep roots” at Stratford Hall.
Periodically, the Payne family has gathered at Stratford Hall for a reunion. Recently (2011) the reunion program offered music, slave tales, and tours of the Great House and — of course — Uncle Wes Cabin.
Target just made it easier to step up your self-care with the addition of several new beauty and body items — including some with fun and funky features.
No ordinary nail polish:
Nails.INC’s cocoa-scented nail polish smells so good you might just want to eat it (although we wouldn’t advise it). The new collection, sold exclusively at Target, features four shades: No Feat Chocolatier (a creamy milk chocolate brown), Rock It Chocolate (a warm caramel color), Meet Me On Mars (think dark chocolate) and Coco Kisses (a rich chocolate brown). Each is vegan/cruelty free and sells for $7.99 in stores or online at target.com.
A mood ring for your nails:
Remember those 1970s rings that changed color based on your mood?
It worked its magic because of a person’s body temperature. Now apply that concept to your manicure, and you’ve got NAIL. INC’s color-changing nail polishes. Watch the colors change by running polished nails under cold or hot water. Each is $7.99 in stores and online.
Don’t just eat your fruits. You can wear them on your nails, too, with Nails.INC’s fruit-scented collection. There’s You Crack Me Up (coconut scent), Wanna Be A Melonaire (watermelon-scented pink) and Don’t Worry Peach Happy (peach-scented). Each is $7.99 in stores and online.
Fresh and fruity:
Holler and Glow has you covered with a mask for almost any need. Its latest launch at Target includes a peeling foot mask ($3.99), one for hydrating the under-eye area ($2.99), a nourishing avocado clay mask ($2.99),
Body masks galore:
clarifying sheet masks ($2.99), an SOS “hangover” face mask for hydrating skin ($2.99), a glove mask for rejuvenating hands ($3.99) and an anti-aging breast sheet mask ($2.99). All are vegan and cruelty free. Find them in stores and online.
A cocktail of fragrances:
Why wear one scent when you can layer more than one to create a fragrance that’s as unique as you? MIX:BAR released this month exclusively at Target seven scents that can be worn on their own or “cocktailed” and layered together. Each is available as an eau de parfum, hair-and-body mist, or a brush-on fragrance pen. The scents are Tangerine Squeeze, Coconut Palm, Glass Rose, Vanilla Bourbon, Cloud Musk, Wood Elixir and Blackberry Tonic. The line is “clean,” meaning it’s free from parabens and phthalates. Prices start at $8.99.