Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This week, we talked about Nevada's divorce ranches,
Speaker 1: which gave people trying to obtain a divorce a place
Speaker 1: to stay while they established Nevada residency. One of our
Speaker 1: previous subjects who was divorced under Nevada law was James G. Fair,
Speaker 1: whose wife Teresa, filed her divorce complaint with the First
Speaker 1: Judicial District Court of Nevada in eighteen eighty three. Teresa
Speaker 1: did not need to stay at a ranch to establish residency,
Speaker 1: though the Fairs lived in Nevada and James was representing
Speaker 1: Nevada in the US Senate, which made Teresa's petition for
Speaker 1: divorce under the grounds of habitual adultery a huge scandal.
Speaker 1: This episode originally came out on April twenty second, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: So enjoy and please excuse our mispronunciation of classer mining,
Speaker 1: which is spelled as though it should be pronounced placer.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracey, back in
Speaker 1: the fall when I was visiting San Francisco, as you recall,
Speaker 1: we ended our tour there and then I stayed for
Speaker 1: a week because I love that city. But the hotel
Speaker 1: that we were staying in had a photo of Senator
Speaker 1: James G. Fair framed and sitting on a little piece
Speaker 1: of furniture in the parlor, and my interest was immediately
Speaker 1: sparked because there was no context for this fie just
Speaker 1: sitting there. It was just there, And so I asked
Speaker 1: around and it turned out that Fair had actually paid
Speaker 1: for that building to be established as a boarding school
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety and that school was run by a
Speaker 1: teacher named Mary Lake, and there were rumors at the
Speaker 1: time that she and Fair were romantically involved. They both
Speaker 1: denied these, but incidentally, Mary Lake allegedly haunts that hotel.
Speaker 1: She never visited me. To the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: we didn't see her. But I then was kind of
Speaker 1: left with the desire to know a lot more about
Speaker 1: James G. Fair, And it turned out as I did
Speaker 1: some digging, oh, he was a piece of work. He
Speaker 1: was a contemporary of Levi Strauss. He was living and
Speaker 1: working in San Francisco around the same time as the
Speaker 1: Denham Magnet. But though Fair often appears on lists of
Speaker 1: the richest men in US history. He just doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same level of name recognition, and so I thought
Speaker 1: it might be fun to do an episode on him.
Speaker 1: But spoiler alert, it's unlikely that you're going to come
Speaker 1: away from this episode feeling warm and fuzzy about James G.
Speaker 1: Fair the way you might have after the Levi Strauss episode.
Speaker 1: He's not quite as magnanimous and lovely a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if your primary affection is for money and the making thereof,
Speaker 1: you might be super into it, maybe at all costs, right,
Speaker 1: regardless of the consequences of your search for money. Fair's
Speaker 1: story starts in Chloher County Trone in Ireland, where he
Speaker 1: was born on December third, eighteen thirty one, and his
Speaker 1: father's name was also James Fair. His mother's maiden name
Speaker 1: was Graham, and that's where he got his middle name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know her first name any longer. The records
Speaker 1: don't seem to clearly indicate what her first name was.
Speaker 1: But when James was twelve, his family immigrated to the
Speaker 1: United States and they lived briefly in Geneva, Illinois. After
Speaker 1: finishing his early schooling in Geneva, Fair went on to
Speaker 1: study both business and science in Chicago, but the California
Speaker 1: gold rush captured his attention and ambition when that whole
Speaker 1: thing blew up, and so at the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: Fair left Illinois to seek his fortune in mining. At first,
Speaker 1: he worked in placer mining, and that is using water
Speaker 1: to excavate and recover the deposit that you're trying to
Speaker 1: get at the most basic form of placer mining is panning,
Speaker 1: but there are much larger scale and more industrial forms
Speaker 1: of placer mining as well. He did okay in these efforts.
Speaker 1: He made a little bit of money, but it was
Speaker 1: never quite the major income that he was hoping for,
Speaker 1: and Fair floundered around a little bit. Once he decided
Speaker 1: that gold might not be the road to wealth for him.
Speaker 1: He tried mining for quarts, because a lot of courts
Speaker 1: was part of the source for where all of these
Speaker 1: gold mines were coming from, but he only met with
Speaker 1: a little bit of success. And then he actually gave
Speaker 1: farming a whirl for a little while on a plot
Speaker 1: near Petaluma, California, but that was similarly unfulfilling and not
Speaker 1: really very profitable, and he gave up after six months.
Speaker 1: In the early eighteen sixties, he shifted his gears again
Speaker 1: away from gold and courts and agriculture and California. This
Speaker 1: time he set his sights on Nevada. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, silver loads had been discovered in Nevada, and
Speaker 1: Fair was eager to be one of the first people
Speaker 1: to capitalize on the silver trade. Yeah, he didn't run
Speaker 1: out there right as these silver loads were being discovered.
Speaker 1: He kind of wanted to get a sense of the
Speaker 1: whole situation and if it was really a viable thing,
Speaker 1: since gold had not worked out. But once he realized like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a very real opportunity, he was on top
Speaker 1: of it. It was a really smart move, as he
Speaker 1: was much more successful in silver mining than he had
Speaker 1: been in gold mining, although I should point out that
Speaker 1: many of these mines were also producing both silver and gold,
Speaker 1: but silver was just what was making the most money.
Speaker 1: He went to Virginia City, Nevada, which is south of Reno.
Speaker 1: It's to the east of Lake Tahoe's northern tip. And
Speaker 1: Fair worked prospecting in Virginia City for five years on
Speaker 1: his own, but in eighteen sixty five, a corporate enterprise
Speaker 1: hired him as its superintendent, and that mine was the
Speaker 1: Opher Mine, named after King Solomon's o Fear mine, from
Speaker 1: which so much wealth had sprung. Soon Fair was showing
Speaker 1: just how good he was managing the oper mines, business interests,
Speaker 1: and day to day functions, and that skill attracted the
Speaker 1: attentions of other mining operations. He was hired as director
Speaker 1: of the Hale and Norcross mine. He also became friends
Speaker 1: with John W. McKay. His work at Hale and Norcross
Speaker 1: turned it from something that just wasn't turning a profit
Speaker 1: into a valuable venture, resulted in two billion dollars over
Speaker 1: the course of two years. That money didn't go back
Speaker 1: to Fair, though it went to the company. In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Fair and Halen Norcross severed their relationship for
Speaker 1: reasons that have never been totally clear. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of theories about maybe him being frustrated that
Speaker 1: he wasn't really getting much of the profit and that
Speaker 1: he kind of just told them to go take a hike,
Speaker 1: or that he may have been making noises like that
Speaker 1: and they told him to go take a hike. We
Speaker 1: don't really know what happened exactly, but Fair and his
Speaker 1: friend Mackay, who had also been working in mining, Towns
Speaker 1: joined forces with San Francisco stockbrokers James C. Flood and W. S.
Speaker 1: O'Brien to buy a controlling interest in the Hale and
Speaker 1: Norcross mine in eighteen sixty eight, and that four man
Speaker 1: partnership eventually came to be known by the nickname the
Speaker 1: Silver Kings. All of them were Irish. James Flood was
Speaker 1: not born in Ireland, but he was born in New
Speaker 1: York shortly after his parents immigrated. This by into Hale
Speaker 1: and Norcross was a really significant move. Prior to the
Speaker 1: forsome joining forces to come into control of the mine.
Speaker 1: Its previous controlling owners were the dominant powers in Nevadam mining.
Speaker 1: These were William C. Ralston and William Sharon, and they
Speaker 1: were backed by the Bank of California, which Ralston had founded.
Speaker 1: They had continued to capitalize on their wealth by making
Speaker 1: loans to hopeful speculators for the purchase of mines or
Speaker 1: stocks in mines. They weren't really hoping these people would
Speaker 1: turn a profit for the mine. They were hoping that
Speaker 1: they would lose their money and be foreclosed on if
Speaker 1: the notes weren't paid in time. Then Ralston and Sharon
Speaker 1: would take control of the mine after it had been
Speaker 1: foreclosed on, they would expand their own footprint. That was
Speaker 1: actually how they had come to own Hale and Norcross
Speaker 1: in the first place. They had not actually been the
Speaker 1: owners when Fair worked there. Yeah, they definitely get characterized,
Speaker 1: and not without reason, as kind of the mustache twirling
Speaker 1: villains of Virginia City and the surrounding area at the time. Fair,
Speaker 1: who at this point had a great deal more agency
Speaker 1: as a controlling owner of the Hale and Norcross, was
Speaker 1: able to run things exactly as he wished, and that
Speaker 1: way turned out to be very, very prosperous. Because Fair
Speaker 1: had begun as a prospector and worked in the mining
Speaker 1: industry for years at that point, and he knew a
Speaker 1: lot about machinery. He understood every facet of mining more deeply,
Speaker 1: perhaps than anyone else at the time. He was also
Speaker 1: quick to take action, but he was not impulsive. He
Speaker 1: thought through all of his ideas and plans completely before
Speaker 1: ever committing manpower and resources to them. He was also
Speaker 1: completely hands on, even as a high level executive. He
Speaker 1: would go into the minds just about every day to
Speaker 1: inspect the progress and equipment and to update the workers
Speaker 1: with new directives based on those inspections. Some of this
Speaker 1: was because he obviously did not trust anybody else's judgment
Speaker 1: as much as he trusted his own, but this really
Speaker 1: cost him. Having his hand in every level of the
Speaker 1: business meant that he did not sleep very much and
Speaker 1: he had very little time for his personal life. He
Speaker 1: did get married during this time, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: his wife a little bit more later, but he pretty
Speaker 1: clearly was focused on the mind and making money. I mean,
Speaker 1: he did everything from these inspections. He wrote all of
Speaker 1: the checks instead of hiring a clerk or an accountant
Speaker 1: to do it. He would do like their reports at
Speaker 1: the end of every fiscal session and like literally go
Speaker 1: line by line through everything they had spent money on.
Speaker 1: He was completely devoted to this job, and the mind
Speaker 1: was so fruitful that it became really apparent that James
Speaker 1: Fair and his business associates should think about expanding their
Speaker 1: holdings and maybe buy up some additional property in the area.
Speaker 1: And some of that property already had smaller mining interests
Speaker 1: on it, and one of the minds that they bought
Speaker 1: a controlling interest in was the Consolidated Virginia, which they
Speaker 1: purchased from Ralston in eighteen seventy two, Ralston's partner Sharon,
Speaker 1: thought that the purchase was going to be dead weight
Speaker 1: for this collection of Irish businessmen. There had been so
Speaker 1: much effort already poured into the Consolidated Virginia mind and
Speaker 1: it was believed to be dry. But it turned out
Speaker 1: that belief was incorrect. And coming up, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about what happened when Fair and his company worked the
Speaker 1: Consolidated Virginia mine. But first we will pause for a
Speaker 1: little sponsor break. So once Fair and his partners took
Speaker 1: control of Consolidated Virginia, they opted to tunnel into the mine,
Speaker 1: and for a while it did indeed seem like a
Speaker 1: waste of time and money, and they would occasionally find
Speaker 1: small veins, but then they would follow them only to
Speaker 1: find an end. But then in March eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: they found a vein that widened more and more the
Speaker 1: deeper they tunneled into it, and before the news could
Speaker 1: break that the allegedly dry mine actually contained a very
Speaker 1: significant vein fifty feet in width. At that point, Fair
Speaker 1: and mackay contacted their partners who were in San Francisco
Speaker 1: and told them to buy any outstanding stock in the
Speaker 1: consolidated Virginia mine that they could. As an aside, Fair
Speaker 1: always claimed that he had been the one to find
Speaker 1: this vein and that he used his years of knowledge
Speaker 1: and skill to really carefully follow this vein of silver
Speaker 1: that was so thin and delicate that it would have
Speaker 1: been impossible for somebody with less savvy to do it.
Speaker 1: But his version leaves out the fact that there was
Speaker 1: another man named Sam Curtis who was the superintendent on
Speaker 1: the project and he was the one that actually made
Speaker 1: that discovery. And additionally, other accounts say that it was
Speaker 1: really easy to follow this vein once they had stumbled
Speaker 1: across it. Yeah, there's it comes up a lot in
Speaker 1: various biographies of him that he always describes it as
Speaker 1: a knife thin edge of vein that he, you know, intuited,
Speaker 1: might go somewhere further, And then other people are like,
Speaker 1: you could literally have driven a team of horses through there,
Speaker 1: it was so easy to find. So some disparity in
Speaker 1: the accounts of what this vein was actually like. Then. Also,
Speaker 1: if you work for a publicly traded company today, this
Speaker 1: business of buying up stock before you make a big announcement,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing you have ethics training about, right.
Speaker 1: I think that James G. Fair probably would have spat
Speaker 1: at the idea of ethics training. That's just my theory.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't mean to in any way
Speaker 1: disparage the van who clearly had a lot of business acumen,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he would have been down with
Speaker 1: ethics training. But back to the story. So once Fair
Speaker 1: and Mackay told their partners to buy up interest in
Speaker 1: the mine, and remember they already had the controlling interest,
Speaker 1: they just wanted as much of it as they could get.
Speaker 1: But they did exactly that, and they also bought as
Speaker 1: much additional property in the surrounding area as they could,
Speaker 1: and soon the partners had amassed a huge tract of land,
Speaker 1: which they called the Consolidated Virginia in California. And that
Speaker 1: vein that they had struck was massive. It came to
Speaker 1: be known as the Big Bonanza, and just a few
Speaker 1: years after the new company was established, their combined mind
Speaker 1: had earned one hundred and fifty million dollars that is
Speaker 1: not adjusted to today's dollars that was in the currency
Speaker 1: at the time. And along the way, Fair had astutely
Speaker 1: invited press rivals and brokers to all come and look
Speaker 1: at the mine, which was all part of driving up
Speaker 1: interest and value to ensure the best possible position should
Speaker 1: he and his partners wish to sell so. After this
Speaker 1: period of incredible growth, Nevada's mining industry started to take
Speaker 1: on a darker image. As stock speculation led to an
Speaker 1: economic downturn, Fair and his associates came to be viewed
Speaker 1: as greedy manipulators of this market. Fair made a variety
Speaker 1: of statements to the press, defending himself and defending his partners,
Speaker 1: but their images were already pretty well tainted. Furthermore, they
Speaker 1: had made a lot of money in part because of
Speaker 1: this over valued mining stock, and over the years, Fair
Speaker 1: and his friend McKay continued the hands on management of
Speaker 1: the mines together while their partners handled finances out of
Speaker 1: their offices in California, and Fair and McKay managed for
Speaker 1: a long time to stay cordial, despite James Fair's tendency
Speaker 1: to showboat and sometimes have temperamental outbursts, and that worked
Speaker 1: largely due to McKay's willingness to just sort of navigate
Speaker 1: around such things. And they were in many ways polar opposites,
Speaker 1: even down to their spending habits. McKay gave away money constantly,
Speaker 1: but he would spend very little on himself. Fair, on
Speaker 1: the other end, would spend lavishly on what we would
Speaker 1: probably call promoting his personal brand today. He liked to
Speaker 1: do things that made him look big and important, but
Speaker 1: he was otherwise really tight with money. Fair had diversified
Speaker 1: his fortune and invested in a number of other business ventures.
Speaker 1: Over the years, he amassed more and more wealth the
Speaker 1: whole time. We mentioned earlier that Fair was a contemporary
Speaker 1: of Levi Strauss, and one space where their stories are
Speaker 1: pretty similar is in the world of San Francisco real estate.
Speaker 1: So just as Straus spot up interesting properties around the
Speaker 1: city to build up his holdings, Fair did the same
Speaker 1: thing starting in eighteen sixty nine. In Fair's case, he
Speaker 1: focused first on businesses and residential properties, but then he
Speaker 1: started expanding his interests in his business acumen to get
Speaker 1: involved in railroads and transit systems as well. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, he built the South Pasife Coast Railroad, and
Speaker 1: this also included a ferry system, and it was really
Speaker 1: a key moment in the growth of the Bay Area
Speaker 1: because it connected San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Oakland,
Speaker 1: and less than a decade after it was completed, Fair
Speaker 1: sold the whole thing to the Southern Pacific Company in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six, and he made himself a million dollars
Speaker 1: in the process. Even before he sold off the South
Speaker 1: Pacific Coast Railroad, he had already moved into yet another
Speaker 1: entirely new career as a politician. In eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: he was elected to the United States Senate and a
Speaker 1: race against his mining rival William Sharon, and Fare had
Speaker 1: run on a platform that focused on the interests of
Speaker 1: the state of Nevada, even when those interests were not
Speaker 1: necessarily in line with his political party. The obituary that
Speaker 1: ran it got picked up by the New York Times,
Speaker 1: which is what I read it in, but it ran
Speaker 1: in other papers when Fair died described him as quote
Speaker 1: nominally a Democrat. The silver minds of the state were
Speaker 1: a huge economic driver, and as a consequence, Fair, who
Speaker 1: of course knew all about them, was able to prioritize
Speaker 1: those interests to keep the state economy prosperous. And in
Speaker 1: his campaign he told people that he didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about politics, but he knew what the state and its
Speaker 1: miners needed, but once he had his senatorial seat, he
Speaker 1: didn't actually do much with it. It was estimated that
Speaker 1: he had spent about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: getting elected, but after attending some sessions dutifully for the
Speaker 1: first few months of his term, he just sort of
Speaker 1: seemed to check out. Eventually, he was actually spending more
Speaker 1: time back in San Francisco than he was in Washington,
Speaker 1: and even on the issue of advocating for the silver
Speaker 1: mining industry, which he had run on as his platform,
Speaker 1: he led another Nevada Senator, John P. Jones, take the
Speaker 1: lead when it came to speaking on the issue. On
Speaker 1: the Senate floor, Fair voted in favor of the Chinese
Speaker 1: Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty one, but he wasn't especially
Speaker 1: active on any other issues. He really preferred to go
Speaker 1: back to California and gossip to all of his friends
Speaker 1: about Washington politicians. Then when he was in Washington, he
Speaker 1: tended to skip sessions and drink in his office with
Speaker 1: his friends. It turned out that he just found the
Speaker 1: Senate to be boring. Yeah, at one point he said
Speaker 1: something about how to him like listening to a bunch
Speaker 1: of people talk about things like, you know, what a
Speaker 1: person should be paid as a fair wage just bored
Speaker 1: him to tears, and he would rather be either in
Speaker 1: the minds or running something. He was not so much
Speaker 1: with the legislation, but in the midst of his term
Speaker 1: he also became the focus of a massive scandal when
Speaker 1: his wife of twenty two years filed for divorce, and
Speaker 1: the scandal came about because she cited habitual adultery is
Speaker 1: the reason that she sought to end the marriage in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three. This was the first time such a
Speaker 1: charge was made against a sitting US senator, and it
Speaker 1: was nationwide front page news. Fairs fellow senators were horrified
Speaker 1: and denounced him. The divorce hearings took place in early
Speaker 1: May eighteen eighty three, and the testimony was big news.
Speaker 1: That testimony was also extremely damning to James G. Fair.
Speaker 1: One of his armors testified during the hearing and another
Speaker 1: one provided a deposition to the court. Fair claimed the
Speaker 1: whole thing was a political plot that had been orchestrated
Speaker 1: by his enemies, but he also didn't contest any of
Speaker 1: the charges that were made against him. He agreed to
Speaker 1: the divorce, and then when the dust settled, the judgment
Speaker 1: against him was really harsh. The conditions of the divorce
Speaker 1: stated that James would get custody of the couple's two sons,
Speaker 1: James and Charles, and they also had two daughters, Teresa
Speaker 1: and Virginia, who were to stay with their mother per
Speaker 1: the court's decision. But the big news was that missus
Speaker 1: Fair was also granted nearly five million dollars in cash
Speaker 1: and securities, which is believed to be the largest divorce
Speaker 1: settlement in history at that time. This was a huge
Speaker 1: loss for Fair, not just because of the public scandal
Speaker 1: and the dissolution of his family, but also because it
Speaker 1: led to the dissolution of his very successful long term
Speaker 1: business partnership. William S O'Brien had died in eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: but McKay and Flood had sided with Teresa in the divorce.
Speaker 1: Things had already became I'm strained when Fair had started
Speaker 1: working as a senator while he was in Washington. Theresa
Speaker 1: would look to McKay for support in California, and by
Speaker 1: helping her, mackay had made Fair feel insulted. Since these
Speaker 1: three men couldn't untangle their business feelings. Fair instead contented
Speaker 1: himself by giving his business associates some backhanded compliments in
Speaker 1: the press. Yeah, he would say, you know, things along
Speaker 1: the lines are like, oh, they've done so well for themselves,
Speaker 1: considering you know, they started out poor stupid humans like
Speaker 1: they did. It was just really unkind to them. And
Speaker 1: we're going to talk next about some of the family
Speaker 1: drama that swirled around the Fairs after the divorce. But
Speaker 1: first we are going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: hear from one of our sponsors. So Fair's daughters after
Speaker 1: the divorce were raised by their mother, Teresa, and she
Speaker 1: raised them to be educated and well mannered. Fair could
Speaker 1: not really be bothered to do the same for his
Speaker 1: sons had disastrous consequences. His son Jimmy, developed a serious
Speaker 1: drinking problem, which was often reported in the press, including
Speaker 1: what sounds to me like a terrifying night when he
Speaker 1: drank twenty cocktails in one sitting and a doctor had
Speaker 1: to be called because he passed out. Jimmy actually died
Speaker 1: very young, and his cause of death was it reported
Speaker 1: entirely differently from paper to paper. Some claimed that he
Speaker 1: died of acute alcoholism, others stated that he had died
Speaker 1: of suicide. Fair's relationships with his surviving children were strained
Speaker 1: when his oldest daughter, Teresa, who went by Tessei, got
Speaker 1: married in a high profile society wedding. Fair was not invited,
Speaker 1: although he claimed that he sent the newly weds a
Speaker 1: million dollars as a wedding present, even though he had
Speaker 1: not been invited. Yeah, it's unknown if that actually happened
Speaker 1: or if it was something he just said to the
Speaker 1: press to stir up their interests. He kind of liked
Speaker 1: to be in the press, but he definitely didn't go
Speaker 1: to the wedding. Fair retired from politics after his first
Speaker 1: term ended in eighteen eighty seven, and then he settled
Speaker 1: into the work of managing his real estate interests in
Speaker 1: San Francisco in the surrounding area. He bought more properties,
Speaker 1: particularly money making properties like office buildings and retail spaces
Speaker 1: that would generate rental income, and all of his rental
Speaker 1: agreements put the onus of maintenance and upkeep on the renters,
Speaker 1: so he was able to keep most or all of
Speaker 1: that rent money rather than funneling it back into property improvements,
Speaker 1: and this gave him something of a slumlord reputation. His
Speaker 1: properties were known for being run down, but he always
Speaker 1: claimed that the real estate taxes were just far too
Speaker 1: high to allow him any budget for refurbishment. His wife,
Speaker 1: Teresa Fair, died in eighteen ninety one. The Fair's son, Charlie,
Speaker 1: tried to get an advance on the trust fund that
Speaker 1: was set up in her will in order to pay
Speaker 1: off debts that he had accrued purchasing racehorses. Charlie had
Speaker 1: also developed a dependency on alcohol, and in a hasty move,
Speaker 1: he married a young woman who was rumored to be
Speaker 1: running a brothel out of her home. All of this
Speaker 1: caused a rift between Charlie and his sisters, as well
Speaker 1: as between and his father. And James Fair had always
Speaker 1: been a drinker. His sons inherited their problems with alcohol
Speaker 1: from him, but in these later years of his life
Speaker 1: his reliance on alcohol increased significantly. He also ate voraciously,
Speaker 1: and not in a healthy way. He started each day
Speaker 1: with four boiled eggs, a dozen slices of toast, a steak,
Speaker 1: and coffee, and the heavy meals and the heavy drinking
Speaker 1: really took a toll on his health, and as he
Speaker 1: began to reckon with the reality of his mortality. He
Speaker 1: also decided to reconcile with his son, Charlie. By eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, Fair's health started to decline rapidly, but even
Speaker 1: so he remained a contrarian. When his pastor visited to
Speaker 1: discuss the sermon that he might give at Fair's funeral service,
Speaker 1: it made the silver Magnet so furious that he got
Speaker 1: out of bed. He put on his work clothes and
Speaker 1: he walked his office to work, and he did that
Speaker 1: for two more days, but those were his last trips
Speaker 1: out of the house. Even though he knew that he
Speaker 1: was probably going to die soon, having someone else tell
Speaker 1: him that just made him irate, so he kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to prove them wrong. But time eventually caught up
Speaker 1: with him. He caught what seemed initially to just be
Speaker 1: a cold in December, but he couldn't seem to recover
Speaker 1: from it. He was also diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease,
Speaker 1: and soon after that illness, around Christmas of December eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, he fell into an unconscious state, from which
Speaker 1: he never awoke. On December twenty ninth, eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: James Fair died at Lick House. That was one of
Speaker 1: his homes in San Francisco. At the time of his death,
Speaker 1: his estate was valued at and estimated forty million dollars.
Speaker 1: In his will, he arranged for each of his children
Speaker 1: to be supported by the estate with a regular income
Speaker 1: for the rest of their lives. In the event of
Speaker 1: his daughter's deaths, their inheritance would pass to their children,
Speaker 1: and in the case of his son Charles dying, his
Speaker 1: share would be split between his sisters. It would not
Speaker 1: go to Charlie's wife, Maud or any children of that marriage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there had been hoped since he had reconciled with Charlie
Speaker 1: that he might also finally accept Charlie's wife, but apparently
Speaker 1: not so much. Charlie had sent word to his sisters,
Speaker 1: both of whom were living in New York at the time,
Speaker 1: that their father was about to die, but they had
Speaker 1: refused to answer their estranged brother because they had not
Speaker 1: reconciled with him. They instead sent word to other family
Speaker 1: friends in San Francisco, though about the situation via telegraph.
Speaker 1: Fair also left money to his siblings, who left his sisters,
Speaker 1: Mary Anderson and Margaret J. Cruthers two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each, as well as fifty thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: his brother William Fair and twenty thousand dollars to his
Speaker 1: brother Edward. Orphan asylums were also beneficiaries. Fair made provisions
Speaker 1: for orphanages run by different religious denominations in the city
Speaker 1: of San Francisco to each have their own bequest. Those
Speaker 1: are not massive bequests. They were large for the time,
Speaker 1: but when you consider how much money he was doling out,
Speaker 1: it kind of seems like I should give some to
Speaker 1: charity so people don't think of a journey. It's like,
Speaker 1: here have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Oh, you
Speaker 1: orphaned twenty five thousand. I'm not judging, yes, I am.
Speaker 1: Fair also put some really interesting stipulations into his will
Speaker 1: about potential efforts to break said will. So, according to
Speaker 1: how it was written, if any of his children contested
Speaker 1: the will, their share would automatically go to the other
Speaker 1: two siblings, and if anyone came forward claiming either to
Speaker 1: be James Fair's illegitimate child or claiming to be a
Speaker 1: common law wife, they would just be issued fifty dollars
Speaker 1: and get nothing more. What Fair didn't anticipate with those stipulations.
Speaker 1: Was all three of his children contesting the will in
Speaker 1: a sort of unified front. None of them wanted to
Speaker 1: deal with trustees and an income that was doled out
Speaker 1: from a trust. All of them wanted to just have
Speaker 1: their inheritance. And then, to make matters even more contentious,
Speaker 1: the will vanished from the county Clerk's office just a
Speaker 1: month after James Fair died. It was replaced with a
Speaker 1: blank piece of paper in the envelope that the will
Speaker 1: had been filed in. A lot of people were questioned
Speaker 1: as police tried to piece to together who had access
Speaker 1: to this ovelope, who could have made the switch. Nothing
Speaker 1: came of the investigation, and the will was never recovered,
Speaker 1: and the trustees claimed that the Fair children must have
Speaker 1: taken the will so that the estate would be split
Speaker 1: among them. The siblings believed that the trustees had stolen
Speaker 1: the will because they knew that it would be revealed
Speaker 1: as fraudulent. And as all of these accusations were made
Speaker 1: and the investigation stalled, a woman named Neddie Craven, who
Speaker 1: was the principal of the Mission Grammar School, came forward
Speaker 1: and claimed that she had a will that Fair made
Speaker 1: after the one that had disappeared. This was a handwritten will,
Speaker 1: so the press nicknamed it the pencil will, and it
Speaker 1: left the estate to the children. The will had allegedly
Speaker 1: been written because missus Craven had spoken to James Fair
Speaker 1: about a bill that was related to school teacher's pension funds,
Speaker 1: and he had written this copy to include a bequest
Speaker 1: of fifty thousand dollars to the pension fund. While the
Speaker 1: Fair family initially supported Missus Craven in her document, soon
Speaker 1: she produced more handwritten documents, claiming them to be the
Speaker 1: writing of James Fair. Two of them left her properties
Speaker 1: and one declared her his wife, and then that set
Speaker 1: off a whole series of events that ended up in
Speaker 1: a very expensive trial. Eventually, Craven caved under this financial pressure.
Speaker 1: She handed over the handwritten deeds and marriage declaration in
Speaker 1: return for a small sum of cash. Now, when she
Speaker 1: initially appeared with a handwritten will that seemed to convey
Speaker 1: exactly what his kids always wanted, they were like, yes,
Speaker 1: this woman is the real deal. And then when she
Speaker 1: was like he also left me two very big rental properties,
Speaker 1: they were like, wait a minute. And then she was like,
Speaker 1: and I'm his common law wife, They're like hold the phone,
Speaker 1: and it became like a whole big, crazy thing. But
Speaker 1: as the Craven issue receded, numerous other claimants to Fair's
Speaker 1: life and fortune emerged. Multiple women claiming to have been
Speaker 1: engaged or common law married to James Fair came forward,
Speaker 1: as well as a number of people claiming to be
Speaker 1: his children. The nineteenth century passed into the twentyth century
Speaker 1: before this will was settled and the Fair children finally
Speaker 1: got their inheritance. So, really, a lot of people liked him.
Speaker 1: He was capable of being friendly with pretty much everybody,
Speaker 1: even making people he had never met before feel like
Speaker 1: they were his old friends. His career in mining had
Speaker 1: been so successful in part because he treated everybody the same,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether they were a wealthy executive or a
Speaker 1: worker down in the mine. But that was only one
Speaker 1: side of his personality. The other side is a Fair
Speaker 1: that was fairly conceited about his own skills and intellect.
Speaker 1: So in some ways it kind of seems like he
Speaker 1: treated most people equally because he saw everyone as equally
Speaker 1: less impressive than himself. He was not above taking advantage
Speaker 1: of someone that he thought was foolish In business, and
Speaker 1: he would later crow about business deals that were far
Speaker 1: more favorable to him than the other involved party. He
Speaker 1: was shrewd and manipulative even with his family members. At
Speaker 1: one point, he gave a fake tip to his wife
Speaker 1: about a stock, knowing that she would not only buy
Speaker 1: her own personal savings, but also tell other people about it.
Speaker 1: And when all of those people started buying and the
Speaker 1: stock was hot, Fair sold his shares and made a profit.
Speaker 1: His wife ended up losing her life savings, and he
Speaker 1: was not especially sympathetic about that loss, which might be
Speaker 1: another reason that she wanted to divorce him, and another
Speaker 1: thing that would be in ethics class. Yes, that ability
Speaker 1: to ingratiate himself to other people and just charm them
Speaker 1: to pieces was very real, though, and it was something
Speaker 1: that he really used to his advantage. A lot of
Speaker 1: his most successful business dealings were built around relationships that
Speaker 1: he had fostered with this very genial side to his personality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was definitely two men in one. The obituaries that
Speaker 1: appeared in various papers after James G. Fair died all
Speaker 1: noted what an accomplished man he was, how astute his
Speaker 1: business mind was, and how incredibly skilled he was mechanically,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really paint a rosy picture of the man.
Speaker 1: A lot of them said a lot of bad things
Speaker 1: about him as well. In one of his acquaintances described
Speaker 1: Fair as a master mechanic, a shrewd financier, and quote
Speaker 1: from early childhood, more interested in the affairs of James G.
Speaker 1: Fair than any other soul on Earth. Oh, James Fair,
Speaker 1: you self involved bees. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
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Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
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