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Seed and produce merchant; brought natural gas to Fort Wayne
On the record
Bash's family moved to Fort Wayne in 1854, and his father Solomon Bash founded the seed-and-produce commission house of S. Bash & Company in 1868 with P. D. Smyser and P. L. McKee; Charles became sole owner on his father's death in 1914. As organizer of the Salamonie Mining & Gas Company he brought natural gas to Fort Wayne in 1890 — the first piped gas flame was lit at his own home. He was an organizer and original stockholder of the Home Telephone & Telegraph Company, an incorporator of the Wayne Knitting Mills, and established the first fertilizer plant in northeastern Indiana. He directed the Hamilton National Bank and the Fort Wayne Electric Works, served on the board of public works under Mayor Oakley and on the board of education, promoted the Toledo–Fort Wayne–Chicago barge canal, and sang in the "Big Four Quartet" in the McKinley campaigns of 1896 and 1900. He married Flora E. Orr in April 1882.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History, Vol. II (1917), biographical sketch and portrait, read first-hand. No second source reached for this profile.