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.