Wiley was a son of Daniel and Nancy Wright Payne originally of Kershaw County, South Carolina. His father died when Wiley was only 4 years of age in Tattnall County, Georgia where the family had procured land in the Georgia Lottery of 1805. Despite Daniel's early demise, his family stayed on the land they had farmed in Georgia until the first of the children married. This happened when his sister Elizabeth married Dr. John Millar in 1814. Wiley's mother Nancy remained a widow and was also the executor of her husband's estate which was sold about 1818 so that Nancy, Elizabeth and husband John (and two children), and Nancy's two sons Banyan and Wiley could all relocate to newly opened lands in Cotaco County, Alabama (soon to be renamed Morgan County, Alabama) near the Tennessee River. Here all of the households remained for several years. Both Banyan and Wiley married sisters, Synthia and Sarah Owen. Wiley and Sarah had three sons in Alabama: Darling Thomas, Banyan, and Daniel. In 1827 Nancy Payne died and son Banyan became her executor. In just a few short years Banyan and Wiley and their families decided to move again to West Tennessee, to land near the Mississippi River, near the little town of Portersville in Tipton County. There Wiley and Sarah had three more sons: Benjamin Wiley, Albert Green, and Rial who would die as an infant. Sarah Owen apparently did not do well following Rial's birth in 1839. She died in July, 1840. In 1841, Wiley remarried Elizabeth Marable Adkins, the widow of Thomas Adkins. The couple had a son born in 1842, John Wiley. Unfortunately Wiley died in November, 1843. It appears likely that he was buried next to his first wife Sarah, most probably on the land which they farmed. Wiley's brother Banyan who was prospering on his own farmland nearby made sure that Elizabeth and his brother's children were taken care of.