The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Obituary for Charles F. Bayha, paper unknown but presumably the Bluffton News-Banner.]

[headline] Charles F. Bayha Dies in Maryland

Mrs. Effie Bayha of this city received a telephone call Friday night informing her that her son Charles F. Bayha, 59, died of a heart attack in Silver Springs, Md., at 9 o'clock Friday morning. He had made his home with a son John the last few years and had been in ill health since 1945.

The decedent was born June 17, 1893 in Bluffton to Frank and Effie Bayha. He left here about 1911 and five or six years later settled in York, Pa. In 1918 he married Alice Winand of York. She died in 1926.

Surviving besides the mother, Mrs. Bayha, are two sons, John M., at whose home he died, and Franklin F. of Fort Wayne; two daughters, Mrs. Russell (Martha) Wise, Silver Springs, Md., and Mrs. W.D. (Sarah) Compton, Springfield, Ill.; three sisters, Mrs. Floyd (Mary) Thomas, and Ruth Bayha, Huntington Route 3, and Mrs. Agnes C. Wysong, Fort Wayne; a brother, Ralph Bayha, of this city and 13 grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held Monday morning in Silver Springs and burial will be in York, Pa.

Note: Charles Frederick Bayha

Most of what is known to our family about Charles Frederick was learned from his youngest two children; as a young man, he left Indiana and moved east, and was not in contact with his parents or siblings much at all. Only one other sibling of his left Indiana (sister Agnes), and unlike Charles, she returned to Indiana to live out the remainder of her life after some years elsewhere. With regards to the information here, most of it is derived from written notes within the files of Jane Anne Thomas, as well as from conversations regarding her memories of him. I will preface the following with the note that Jane Anne did not think highly of him, and considered the hard lives his children led to be a failing of his; her notes and anecdotes were colored strongly by her opinions of him.

Charles married Alice Small Winand when both of them were in their mid-twenties, and they had four children: John Millard, Sarah Elfrieda (named for Charles' mother), Franklin Harry (named for Charles' father), and Martha Frances. Alice died just two months after the birth of their youngest daughter, and less than six years after she and Charles were married.

Away from his family and without much support, the young widower Charles split up his children. The eldest two (John and Sarah) he kept in Pennsylvania, sending them to work for other families (according to Jane Anne's notes) and keeping the income for himself. His youngest two children (Franklin and Martha) he sent to Indiana, to live in the Fort Wayne Children's Home in St. Joseph Twp, Allen Cty, Indiana. According to Jane Anne, this was in the hopes that his sister, Mary Alice (Bayha) Thomas, would take them in and raise them on the Thomas family farm. While Mary Alice made a point of getting the two out of the children's home to visit the farm as often as possible, and to allow them to spend time with her children (their first cousins - Floyd Jr., Jane Anne, Dean, and Bobby), the family had their hands quite full already. (One of their children, Bobby, was struck by a debilitating illness that would eventually require constant care.) Franklin and Martha often told Jane Anne in later years that their times visiting the Thomas family were the happiest memories they had of growing up.

I do not have much information as to the relationship Charles had with his adult children, although the only pictures I have of him are snapshots taken with his children and their families (notably Sarah's or John's). His obituary states that he was living with his eldest son John at the time of his death and had been for at least a few years, prior to his death in 1952. Charles is buried in Greenmount Cemetery in York, York Cty, Pennsylvania, next to his wife; to the best of my knowledge, he had never remarried.