California Biographies

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from 
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176


SPENCER FAY. A well-known landholder of Tulare county, Spencer Fay is located five 
miles south of Portersville, where in 1889 he purchased five hundred and twenty acres of land. 
Later he added six hundred acres, now owning eleven hundred, devoted to pasture and the cul- 
tivation of wheat. This property he leases, although he makes his home on the place. A na- 
tive of Springville, N. Y., he was born August 20, 1849, a son �f Benjamin Fay, a wagon maker 
and carpenter of the same place, where he is now living, at the age of eighty-two years. The fam- 
ily came originally from Massachusetts, the paternal grandfather, also named Benjamin, re- 
moving from Athol, that state, where he was a farmer, to New York state in 181 1. He was an 
active participant of the war of 1812, after the war making his home in Erie county, where his 
death occurred. In manhood Benjamin Fay, Jr., married Hulda Cope, a native of Canada, and 
she died in New York state about 1865. 

In a family of four sons and one daughter born to his parents, Spencer Fay was the old- 
est. He received his education in the common school in the vicinity of his home, after which 
he was apprenticed to learn the trade of blacksmith. Deciding to locate on the Pacific coast, 
he came to California in 1874, and settled at Portersville, where for fifteen years he carried on 
a lucrative business as a blacksmith. With the results of his industry and energy, in 1889, he 
purchased the five hundred and twenty acres which formed the nucleus of his property. One 
of the branches to which Mr. Fay has given his attention has been the budding of orange trees 
for market, and in which he has met with gratifying success. For a time he was also engaged 
in sheep raising in partnership with Ed D. Halbert. 

In California Mr. Fay married Tennie Rhodes, a native of Tulare county, and they have one 
daughter, Jewel, who is at home with her parents. Fraternally Mr. Fay is a charter member 
of  Portersville Lodge, A. O. LI. W., and politically is a stanch adherent of the principles 
advocated in the platform of the Democratic party.