Carrie Idelia Gray 1878-1922

I know very little about my father's mother.  She was born on June 15, 1878 to Ashfield John Gray and Adelia (Della) Seely Gray.  Carrie was the oldest of 3 children. Her younger sister, Arabella (or Isabella) married Augustus (Gus) James Fitzsimmons and had 8 children. Her brother, Alfred, may have had a mental disability.  He lived with his mother most of his life but was found in the Retreat Hospital for the Insane, Newport, PA in the 1920 census.  I have located a 1914 newspaper article in which he reportedly attacked his mother. The headline on this article is as follows:
"Crazed, Twice Shoots Defender of Mother
Fires Bullet Into Border's Head and Hand, Then Barricades Himself for Twelve Hours"
In 1930 he was back living with his mother.  In her will, Della specified that Alfred was to be cared for.

Carrie was born in Fell Township, Lackawanna, PA.  She appear there with her parents in the 1880 census.  By 1900, she appears in South Canaan, living with her grandfather, Jonas Seely (photo at left) and is still living there in 1910.  Sometime in the next few years she met and married my grandfather, Joseph Paynter. They had 2 sons, Russell born in 1913 and Clayton, born in 1916.  The marriage was short however.  Carrie contracted breast cancer and died Feb 1, 1922.   She was 43 years old.   Here is her obituary, from the Wayne Independent, Honesdale, PA, Feb 7, 1922:

"The funeral of Mrs. Joseph Paynter was held last Friday afternoon at one o'clock at her late home in Waymart and was largely attended by friends and relatives. The services were in charge of Rev. Mr. Lloyd, pastor of the Presbyterian church of which the deceased was a member.  Mrs. Paynter was a highly respected resident of Waymart where she spent the greater part of her life. She is survived by her husband and two little sons, Russell and Clayton, aged 9 and 6; also by her mother, Mrs. Della Gray; one brother, Alfred of Parsons; one sister, Mrs. G. Fitzsimmons of Forest City."

Carrie is buried in Canaan Corners cemetery, next to Joseph.

Joseph E. Paynter 1875-1952

When I first started this blog, I wrote about my mothers parents.  Today I am going to document what I know about my father's father.  Joseph was the 5th child of Richard Paynter and Ellen Oliver Paynter.  Born on Dec 11, 1875, he was probably about 2 or 3 years old when his father died. His mother remarried when he was about 9.  I found him in the 1880 census in Oregon Township, Wayne County, PA with his widowed mother, his brothers and sisters. In the 1900 census, he can be found living in his married sister's household, designated as a servant.

For awhile he worked as a glass-cutter, making some beautiful cut-glass vases, dishes, and jewelry. When I was a child, I remember being allowed to wear a lovely cut-glass heart on a necklace chain.  One day the chain broke and the heart cracked when it hit the sidewalk on my way home from school.  I was devastated.  Later, he worked as a guard at Farview Hospital for the Criminal Insane, in Waymart, PA.  This was a model establishment, meant to test ways to rehabilitate inmates and teach them skills while making the complex self-sufficient.  From a booklet I read called "The Farview State Hospital Agricultural Complex,"  the guards were called overseers and their job was mostly to supervise the inmates work around the complex.  The inmates farmed and did all the repairs around the complex as a rehabilitation therapy and to offset the cost of keeping them incarcerated.
   
Joe was married three times. His first wife, Bertha Highouse gave him two sons and a daughter. The second son, Nelson, died at 8 months old. Bertha was pregnant again when her youngest child died, and she committed suicide.  After her death, the 2 older children, Enos and Violet, were sent to live with Bertha's parents, Enos Highhouse and Barbara Gredlein Highhouse.

Around 1911 Joe married his second wife, Carrie Grey. They had two sons, Russel and my Dad, Clayton.  This marriage was not meant to last either.  Carrie contracted breast cancer and died in 1922.  At this point, Joe was left with a teenage daughter and 2 little boys, 9 & 6 years old.  Carrie's aunt, Aldrude Shager was a widow 16 years older than Joe.  She came to take care of the children and Joe eventually married her in order to maintain proper appearances.  Aldrude stayed with Joe until she died in 1940.
    When Clayton and Daisy Orinick married in 1936, they moved in with Joe, since the house he lived in had been left to Clayton and his brother Russell in their grandfather's will (Jonas Seely). Daisy cared for Joe as he got older and began to forget who everyone was. Clayton got a job in New Jersey during WWII and came home on weekends. When the war was over, Russell came home and Daisy and the children moved to New Jersey. Russell couldn't care for Joe the way Daisy had, so he put his father in a nursing home. Joe died there in 1952.  This was 6 months before I was born, so I never got to meet him.

Obituary from The Wayne Independent, Honesdale, PA Feb 26, 1952:
Joseph E. Paynter, 75, formerly of Waymart, died Friday, Feb 22, 1952 at the Leidfrost Nursing Home, Beachlake, after a long illness. He was a native of Bethany. Surviving are three sons; Enos, Akron, O., Russell, Metuchean, N.J., and Clayton, Lyndhurst, N.J. Services were held at the Gerald A. Ball Funeral Home, Waymart, Sunday at 2p.m.  Rev. Russell A. Edwards, pastor, Waymart Baptist Church will officiate. Interment was in Canaan Corners Cemetery, Waymart.

Growing up without a father and outliving 3 wives must have made his life very sad.  I am hoping that either one of my 2 brothers or my sister, who did get to meet him when he was alive, will read this and add their memories of Grandpa Joe. 

Theodore Michael Orinick 1925-2009

This week I'm back on my mother's family.  The 9th surviving child of Matthew & Anna Orinick was my uncle Ted.  Born in 1925, he was only 10 years old when his father died and 14 when he mother died.  His brothers were 8 and 10 years older than he and not a major influence in his teenage years, so I don't think he had a lot of male guidance.  Sometime in the late 1940's he joined the Army and served in Korea.   When he returned he married a local South Canaan girl, Shirley Seeley.  This was around the time his brother Bill's marriage was breaking up, so it was natural for Ted & Shirley to take over the family farm.   They ran the farm until around 1970 and most of my childhood memories of them are centered there.  They had 3 sons there.  The first died at birth, but the other two were close to my age and we became like siblings growing up.  I looked forward to spending my weekends with these "cousin/brothers" and they spend time some summers at our house in New Jersey.
The farm was primarily a dairy farm.  The house is still there, but the barns are long gone. The house sits on a hill with the barn and an equipment shed at the bottom of the hill and across the dirt road.   Ted & Shirley would get up before dawn each morning to go down to the barn and milk the cows.  Their 2 boys went down to work too.  After the morning milking was done, they would let the cows out into the fields to graze during the day.   In the evening the cows would wander back toward the gate and we would go let them back into the barn.   I was always facinated by the fact that each cow knew it's own stanchion and would go right to the correct place.  
When I visited on weekends, I would wake up with the sun, get dressed, and head down the hill to join them. In the evening I would join them again to help. Part of this was because my cousins were there and I was looking for something to do.  When I was very young,  they may have milked by hand, but milk machines and a holding tank were installed early on. I have a vague memory of uncle Ted showing off he brand new equipment.  I was always curious about the cows and helped where I could.   I tried a few times to attach the milking machines, but wasn't very good at it.  I was always afraid of the cows kicking me.  Mostly I remember feeding the cows hay, silage, and a reddish mixture that was supposed to be a bovine dietary supplement.   I think they only got this in the winter when they couldn't go out of the barn.
In addition to caring for the cows, working the farm involved clearing the fields and planting hay and corn for winter feed.   This was very hard work and the only return was what they could earn from the sale of the milk.   They also raised pigs, a few chickens, and the occasional pheasant. They lived almost entirely off the land.   There was a large vegetable garden behind the house and the family diet was supplemented by the occasional hunting expedition for deer, rabbit, and pheasant.  There were also a few ponds in the area where the owning neighbors would allow us to fish.   In the spring we all went out into the woods to pick blueberries,  which were made into jellies or frozen for future use in cakes and pies.   In the fall we would pick apples from several trees on the farm.  Ted would take bushels of apples to the local Cider Mill and come home with a barrel or 2 of apple cider.  This started as benign, but after sitting in the barrels in the cellar over the winter, this became a potent brew for spring enjoyment.

They also had a wonderful love and respect for nature.  This 1975 photo shows them with a pair of fawns they "fostered" when the mother deer had been killed.  They raised these babies until they were old enough to fend for themselves, then released them.
Around 1980 Ted & Shirley decided they had enough of the farm life.  A nearby tavern was up for sale and they decided they would but it.   This was a complicated transaction because my grandfather's will stated that the farm could not be sold as long as any of his daughter's remained single.  They were always to have a home there.  Three of Ted's sisters were still single and Mary still lived on the farm, caring for the house and the boys.   The solution was to split the farm in half.   Ted & Shirley built a second house on their half and turned a marshy area between the two houses into a pond.  They stocked it with fish so they had their own fishing hole.
Owning a tavern proved to be hard work as well and Shirley's health was becoming an issue.  Around 1985 they sold the tavern and moved to Hiddennite, North Carolina.  This location was chosen because a doctor who Shirley was seeing either lived there or had just moved there.   The cost of living in North Carolina was low enough so they were able to live there comfortably with the money from the sale of the tavern and their half of the farm.  They lived there until Shirley died in 2005.
After Shirley died, Ted sold the house in Hiddenite and returned to Pennsylvania.   At first he lived with his son, but that didn't work out.  They found him an apartment and, eventually, a place in a nursing home.  I have heard that he was involved with a younger woman during his final years and spent what money he had liberally on her.   I hope he enjoyed these final years.  Uncle Ted passed away last year, on Spet 27, 2009.
Ted was a gruff man and a hard drinker, but he had a boyish quality to him.  Some young children were afraid of him  but I don't think I ever was.  I saw him as someone whose bark was worse than his bite and always admired how hard he worked and how he cared for the farm animals.   As with most of the members of my family, I am glad to have known him.

Russell Laverne Paynter 1913-1981

My Dad's only full sibling was his brother Russell.  Born on August 30, 1913 to Joseph and Carrie Paynter, Russell had a very different personality from my Dad, but they remained close all their lives. Russ found jobs in Rye New York for both him and my Dad inn the 1930's.  According to my Dad, Russ married Bonnie Edens around 1939, but the marriage only lasted 8 days.  On September 16, 1942 he enlisted in the army and his status is listed as "Separated, without dependents."  His address on his enlisted record is shown as Hampden, Massachusetts.   Between 1942 and 1946, Russ served as a PFC in the US Army.  He served in the Philippines on a road construction crew.
After the war he had a variety of jobs.  He got his pilot's license and bought an Aeroonca Champ, which he often flew from Honesdale, PA to Edison, NJ.  The Honesdale airfield was a small grass strip, located just west of town and is now the site of a grocery store.  I am not sure where the New Jersey airport was, but it was also a grass strip.  My Dad told me that one time they got to NJ after dark and he held a flashlight out the window of the airplane so Russell could see to land.   Luckily, the Champ was a slow airplane. 
In the early 1950's he met and married Sarah Jane Delosier.  They lived in Edison, New Jersey where Russ had a watch repair shop,  and had a son in 1955.  About 1958 they moved to Riverside, California, near Russ's half brother Enos and friend Doug Reed.  I believe he had a watch repair shop there for a while, then went to work at Lockheed.  As I mentioned in my blog about Enos, my Dad, Mom, sister & I drove across country in 1959 to visit them.  I remember their house was a ranch style house on a dead-end street, with fruit trees in the back yard.  At the end of the road was a fence and an open stretch of land, which I think was Orange County Airport.  I remember my cousin having a great model train set in the garage which he & I played with.   He also had an organ that he was learning to play, and that sparked my desire to learn to play too.  (Santa brought me an organ the next Christmas.)
While in California they experienced a 2nd pregnancy but the child died.  In 1965 they adopted a second son. Over the years I made 2 more trips across the country with my parents to visit them and they came back to New Jersey to visit at least 2 times.   While visiting them in California we went to Disney Land, Knotts Berry Farm, and Mexico.   When they came back to New Jersey, Russ took my cousin and I to Coney Island and we went to the New York World's Fair.  We also visited Sarah's elderly aunt in New York City.
On one trip Russ and my cousin came with us as far as Las Vegas and spent a few days their with us before we started home.   We saw Hoover Dam and the adults played at the casinos.  Children weren't allowed in the casinos at the time, so my cousin and I spent the day in a movie theater set up as a place to drop off the kids.  I will never forget watching "The River of No Return" and "The Great Escape" at least twice through each waiting for the adults to come back for us.  On another day, I remember standing outside the casino window with my parents at slot machines just inside where we could see them, and watching the big neon cowboy wave Howdee.  We were fine and there wasn't a second thought to us waiting outside at the time, but something like that would never be allowed today.
On another trip, Russ and my cousin joined us as we drove north to Seattle to see the Seattle World's fair.   We stopped to see the giant Sequoia trees and Crater Lake along the way.  I have a photo of my cousin and I standing by the giant Sequoia that had a tunnel carved out of it for cars to drive through. 
My parents made several more trips to California after I was out on my own.  My Dad and Russell wrote letters to each other regularly over the years and, when reel-to-reel tape recorders became available, they began sending tapes back and forth.  I have a collection of the tapes Russell sent to my father.  Dad saved them all.
At some point, Russell and Sarah joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  I don't know how involved they were in the church, but Russ sent us literature occasionally.  Russ also liked to drink and go to the horse races with his friend Lenny.  I don't now how those two concepts co-existed.  From a distance I cannot say why, but in July 1977, Russell and Sarah were divorced and Russell moved into an apartment.  His drinking was his eventual downfall.  On June 12, 1981, as he walked home intoxicated, he was mugged and killed.  He is buried in Riverside National Cemetery, Riverside, California.

Violet Paynter Doney 1905-1933

Joseph and Bertha Paynter had two other children after Enos.  Their third child, Nelson only lived to be about 7 months old.  Their second child, was my Dad's half-sister Violet.  After her mother died, she and Enos went to live with her mother's parents, as shown in the 1910 census.  However, in the 1920 census she is found living with her father Joseph and his second wife, my grandmother, Carrie.  Since Carrie was probably already very sick at this time and my father and his brother were 4 and 7, she was probably taking care of them to some extent.  The photo to the right is the only photo I have of her.  This was cropped from a photo of her pulling her two half-brothers in a sleigh, so I estimate her age as about 15 or 16.

My Dad always spoke of her with a great deal of love.  One unusual and trivial comment sticks in my mind.  Dad told me that Violet admired the "crescent moons" of his fingernails. Violet married Carletos Henry Doney on September 28, 1923, when she was 18 years old.  Her marriage license shows that she was working in a factory at the time and he was a machinist.   Carletos also had friends in the circus and may have worked in the circus himself for a time.  The photo on the left is the only one I have of him, and it is labeled as being Carletos with his circus friends.


After their marriage, Violet and Carl lived in Washington, DC for a while.  They had 2 children, Leroy born in 1924 and Marjorie born in 1927.  By 1930 they had separated and Violet was working as a servant in Queens New York.  She died on April 12, 1933 in a New York hospital, at the age of 28.   Her cause of death is listed as "Chronic Endoceovicites. Post Quarter shock and hemorage."   I have not been able to find a definition for the medical term "Endoceovicites."   Violet is buried in Canaan Corners Cemetery, outside of Waymart, PA, in the Paynter family plot.  Her two children went to live with her father Joseph and his 3rd wife, Adrude.