Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: So DRAYZ. Back in the fall, when I was visiting
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Uh, as you recall, we ended our tour
Speaker 1: there and then I stayed for a week because I
Speaker 1: love that city. Um. But the hotel that we were
Speaker 1: staying in had a photo of Senator James G. Fair
Speaker 1: framed and sitting on a little um piece of furniture
Speaker 1: in the parlor, and my interest was immediately sparked because
Speaker 1: there was no context for this, which is they're just
Speaker 1: sitting there. There's just there. Uh. 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 eight 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: All she never visited me, to the best of my knowledge. Uh,
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. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was a contemporary of Levi Strauss. He was living
Speaker 1: and working in San Francisco around the same time as
Speaker 1: the Denham Magnet. But though Fair often appears on lists
Speaker 1: of the richest men in US history, he just doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same level of name recognition, and so I
Speaker 1: thought 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 Strouss episode.
Speaker 1: He's not quite as magnanimous and lovely a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if your primary uh affection is for money and the
Speaker 1: making thereof, you might be super into it, maybe at
Speaker 1: all costs, regardless of your search for money. Fair story
Speaker 1: starts in Kloer County, Torone in Ireland, where he was
Speaker 1: born on December three, thirty one, and his father's name
Speaker 1: was also James Fair. His mother's maiden name was Graham
Speaker 1: and that's where he got his middle name. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't know her first name any longer. The records don't
Speaker 1: seem to clearly indicate what her first name was. But
Speaker 1: when James was twelve, his family immigrated to the United
Speaker 1: States and they lived briefly in Geneva, Illinois. After finishing
Speaker 1: his early schooling in Geneva, Fair went on to study
Speaker 1: both business and science in Chicago, but the California gold
Speaker 1: rush captured his attention and ambition when that whole thing
Speaker 1: blew up, and so at the age of eighteen, Fair
Speaker 1: left Illinois to seek his fortune in mining. At first,
Speaker 1: he worked in place our mining, and that is using
Speaker 1: water to excavate and recover the deposit that you're trying
Speaker 1: to get. At the most basic form place our mining
Speaker 1: is panning, but there are much larger scale and more
Speaker 1: industrial forms of place our mining as well. He did
Speaker 1: okay in these efforts. He made a little bit of money,
Speaker 1: but it was never quite the major income that he
Speaker 1: was hoping for, and Fair floundered around a little bit.
Speaker 1: Once he decided that gold might not be the road
Speaker 1: to wealth for him. He tried mining for courts, because
Speaker 1: a lot of courts was part of the source for
Speaker 1: where all of these gold mines were coming from. But
Speaker 1: he only met with a little bit of success, and
Speaker 1: then he actually gave farming a world for a little
Speaker 1: while on a plot near Petaluma, California, but that was
Speaker 1: similarly unfulfilling and not really very profitable, and he gave
Speaker 1: up after six months. In the early eighteen sixties, he
Speaker 1: shifted his gears again away from gold and courts and
Speaker 1: agriculture and California. This time he set his sights on Nevada.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen fifties, silver loads had been discovered
Speaker 1: in Nevada, and Fair was eager to be one of
Speaker 1: the first people to capitalize on the silver trade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't run out there right as these silver loads
Speaker 1: were being discovered. He kind of wanted to get a
Speaker 1: sense of the whole situation and if it was really
Speaker 1: a viable thing, since gold had not worked out. But
Speaker 1: once he realized like, oh, this is a very real opportunity,
Speaker 1: he was on top of it. It was a really
Speaker 1: smart move, as he was much more successful in silver
Speaker 1: mining than he had been in gold mining, although I
Speaker 1: should point out that many of these mines were also
Speaker 1: producing both silver angld, but silver was just what was
Speaker 1: making the most money. He went to Virginia City Nevada,
Speaker 1: which is south of Reno. It's to the east of
Speaker 1: Lake Tahoe's northern tip and Fair worked prospecting in Virginia
Speaker 1: City for five years on his own, but in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five a corporate enterprise hired him as it's superintendent,
Speaker 1: and that mine was the oper Mine, named after King
Speaker 1: Solomon's Oh Fear mine from which so much wealth had sprung.
Speaker 1: Soon Fair was showing just how good he was managing
Speaker 1: the over mines, business interests and day to day functions,
Speaker 1: and that skill attracted the attentions of other mining operations.
Speaker 1: He was hired as director of the Hale and Norcross mine.
Speaker 1: He also became friends with John W. McKay. His work
Speaker 1: at Hale and Norcross turned it from something that just
Speaker 1: was turning a profit into a valuable venture. It resulted
Speaker 1: in two billion dollars over the course of two years.
Speaker 1: That money didn't go back to Fair, though it went
Speaker 1: to the company. In eighteen sixties seven, Fair and Hale
Speaker 1: and Norcross severed their relationship for reasons that have never
Speaker 1: been totally clear. Yeah, there are a lot of theories
Speaker 1: about maybe him being frustrated that he wasn't really getting
Speaker 1: much of the profit and that he kind of just
Speaker 1: told them to go take a hike, or that he
Speaker 1: may have been making noises like that and they told
Speaker 1: him to go take a hike. We don't really know
Speaker 1: what happened exactly, but Fair and his friend McKay, who
Speaker 1: had also been working in mining towns, joined forces with
Speaker 1: San Francisco stockbrokers James C. Flood and W. S. O'Brien
Speaker 1: to buy a controlling interest in the Hale and Norcross
Speaker 1: mine in eighteen sixty eight, and that fore man partnership
Speaker 1: eventually came to be known by the nickname the Silver Kings.
Speaker 1: All of them were Irish. James Flood was not born
Speaker 1: in Ireland, but he was born in New York shortly
Speaker 1: after his parents immigrated US. Buy into Hale and Norcross
Speaker 1: was a really significant move. Prior to the Forsome joining
Speaker 1: forces to come into control of the mind its previous
Speaker 1: controlling owners were the dominant powers in Nevada mining. These
Speaker 1: were William C. Ralston and William Sharon, and they were
Speaker 1: 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 minds or
Speaker 1: stocks and minds. They weren't really hoping these people would
Speaker 1: turn a profit from the mind They were hoping that
Speaker 1: they would lose their money and before closed 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 the time.
Speaker 1: Uh Fair, who at this point had a great deal
Speaker 1: more agency as a controlling owner of the Hale and Norcross,
Speaker 1: was able to run things exactly as he wished, and
Speaker 1: that way it turned out to be very, very prosperous.
Speaker 1: Because Fair had begun as a prospector and worked in
Speaker 1: the mining industry for years at that point, and he
Speaker 1: knew a lot about machinery. He understood every facet of
Speaker 1: mining more deeply, perhaps than anyone else at the time.
Speaker 1: He was also quick to take action, but he was
Speaker 1: not impulsive He thought through all of his ideas and
Speaker 1: plans completely before ever committing manpower and resources to them.
Speaker 1: He was also completely hands on, even as a high
Speaker 1: level executive. He would go into the minds just about
Speaker 1: every day to inspect the progress and equipment and to
Speaker 1: update the workers with new directives based on those inspections.
Speaker 1: Some of this was because he obviously did not trust
Speaker 1: anybody else's judgment as much as he trusted his own,
Speaker 1: but this really cost him. Having his hand in every
Speaker 1: level of the business meant that he did not sleep
Speaker 1: very much and he had very little time for his
Speaker 1: personal life. Yeah, he did get married during this time,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about his wife a little bit more later,
Speaker 1: but he pretty clearly was focused on the mind and
Speaker 1: making money. I mean he did everything from these inspections.
Speaker 1: He wrote all of the checks instead of hiring a
Speaker 1: clerker and accountant to do it. He would do like
Speaker 1: their reports at the end of every UH fiscal session
Speaker 1: and like literally go line by line through everything they
Speaker 1: had spent money on. He was completely devoted to this job,
Speaker 1: and the mind was so fruitful that it became really
Speaker 1: apparent that James Fair and his business associates should think
Speaker 1: about expanding their holdings and maybe buy up some additional
Speaker 1: property in the area. And some of that property already
Speaker 1: had smaller mining interests on it, and one of the
Speaker 1: minds that they bought a controlling interest in was the
Speaker 1: Consolidated Virginia, which they purchased from Ralston in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Ralston's partner Sharon, thought that the purchase was going to
Speaker 1: be deadweight for this collection of Irish businessmen. There had
Speaker 1: been so much effort already poured into the Consolidated Virginia mine,
Speaker 1: and it was believed to be dry. But it turned
Speaker 1: out that belief was incorrect. And coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what happened when Fair in his company
Speaker 1: worked the Consolidated Virginia mine. But first we will pause
Speaker 1: for a little sponsor break. So once Fair and his
Speaker 1: partners took control of Consolidated Virginia, they opted to tunnel
Speaker 1: into the mine, and for a while it did indeed
Speaker 1: seem like a waste of time and money, and they
Speaker 1: would occasionally find small veins, but then they would follow
Speaker 1: them only to find an end. But then in March
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, they found a vein that widened more
Speaker 1: and more the deeper they tunneled into it, and before
Speaker 1: the news could break that the allegedly dry mine actually
Speaker 1: contained a very significant vein fifty feet in width. At
Speaker 1: that point Fair and mackay contacted their partners who were
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and told them to buy any outstanding
Speaker 1: stock in the consolidated Virginia Mind that they could. As
Speaker 1: an aside, Fair always claimed that he had been the
Speaker 1: one to find this vein and that he used his
Speaker 1: years of knowledge and skill to really carefully follow this
Speaker 1: vein of silver that was so thin and delicate that
Speaker 1: it would have been impossible for somebody with less savvy
Speaker 1: to do it. But his version leaves out the fact
Speaker 1: that there was another man named Sam Curtis who was
Speaker 1: the superintendent on the project and he was the one
Speaker 1: that actually made that discovery. And additionally, other accounts say
Speaker 1: that it was really easy to follow this vein once
Speaker 1: they had stumbled across it. Yeah, there's ah. It comes
Speaker 1: up a lot in various biographies of him that he
Speaker 1: always describes it as a knife thin edge of vein
Speaker 1: that he, you know, intuited, might go somewhere further, And
Speaker 1: then other people are like, you could literally have driven
Speaker 1: a team of horses through there. It was so easy
Speaker 1: to find, so uh some disparity in the accounts of
Speaker 1: what this vein was actually like. Then. Also, if if
Speaker 1: you work for a publicly traded company today, this business
Speaker 1: 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: with ethics training. But back to the story. Uh So,
Speaker 1: once Fair and McKay told their partners to buy up
Speaker 1: interest in the mine, and remember they already had the
Speaker 1: controlling interests, they just wanted as much of it as
Speaker 1: they could get. But they did exactly that, and they
Speaker 1: also bought as much additional property in the surrounding area
Speaker 1: as they could, and soon the partners had amassed a
Speaker 1: huge tract of land, which they called the Consolidated Virginia
Speaker 1: and California. And that vein that they had struck was massive.
Speaker 1: It came to be known as the Big Bonanza, and
Speaker 1: just a few years after the new company was established,
Speaker 1: their combined mind had earned a hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars that is not adjusted to today's dollars that was
Speaker 1: in the currency at the time. And along the way,
Speaker 1: Fair had astutely invited press, rivals and brokers to all
Speaker 1: come and look at the mine, which was all part
Speaker 1: of driving up interest and value to ensure the best
Speaker 1: possible position should he and his partners wish to sell so.
Speaker 1: After this period of incredible growth, Nevada's mining industry started
Speaker 1: to take on a darker image. As stock speculation led
Speaker 1: to an economic downturn, Fair and his associates came to
Speaker 1: be viewed as greedy manipulators of this market. Fair made
Speaker 1: a variety of statements to the press, defending himself and
Speaker 1: defending his partners, but their images were already pretty well tainted. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: they had made a lot of money in part because
Speaker 1: of this overvalued mining stock, and over the years, Fair
Speaker 1: and his friend McKay continued the hands on management of
Speaker 1: the Minds together while their partners handled finances out of
Speaker 1: their offices in California and Farren McKay managed for a
Speaker 1: long time to stay cordial despite James Fair's tendency to
Speaker 1: show boat and sometimes have temperamental outbursts, and that worked
Speaker 1: largely due to McKay's willing is to just sort of
Speaker 1: navigate around such things. And they were in many ways
Speaker 1: polar opposites, even down to their spending habits. McKay gave
Speaker 1: away money constantly, but he had spend very little on himself. Fair,
Speaker 1: on the other end, would spend lavishly on what we
Speaker 1: would probably call promoting his personal brand today. He liked
Speaker 1: to do things that made him look big and important,
Speaker 1: but he was otherwise really tight with money. Fair had
Speaker 1: diversified his fortune and invested in a number of other
Speaker 1: business ventures. Over the years, he amassed more and more
Speaker 1: wealth the whole time. We mentioned earlier that Fair was
Speaker 1: a contemporary of Levi Strauss, and one space where their
Speaker 1: stories are pretty similar is in the world of San
Speaker 1: Francisco real estate. So just as Strauss bought up interesting
Speaker 1: properties around the city to build up his holdings, Spared
Speaker 1: at the same thing starting in eighteen sixty nine, in
Speaker 1: Fair's case, he focused first on businesses and residential properties,
Speaker 1: but then he started expanding his interest in his business
Speaker 1: acumen to get involved in railroads and transit systems as well.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy eight, he built the South Pacific Coast Railroad,
Speaker 1: and this also included a ferry system, and it was
Speaker 1: really a key moment in the growth of the Bay
Speaker 1: Area because it connected San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose,
Speaker 1: and Oakland in less than a decade after it was completed,
Speaker 1: Fair sold the whole thing to the Southern Pacific Company
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty six, and he made himself a million
Speaker 1: dollars in the process. Even before he sold off the
Speaker 1: South Pacific Coast Railroad, he had already moved into yet
Speaker 1: another 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 Farah 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 uh it got picked up by the New York Times,
Speaker 1: which is what I read it in, but it ran
Speaker 1: another papers when Fair died described him as quote nominally
Speaker 1: a Democrat, the silver minds of the state were a
Speaker 1: huge economic driver, and as a consequence, Fair, who of
Speaker 1: course knew all a 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 let 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. At one point he said something
Speaker 1: about how to him, like listening to a bunch of
Speaker 1: people talk about um 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 as
Speaker 1: the reason that she sought to end the marriage in
Speaker 1: eight three. This was the first time such a charge
Speaker 1: was made against a sitting US senator, and it was
Speaker 1: nationwide front page news. Fair's fellow senators were horrified and
Speaker 1: denounced him. The divorce hearings took place in early May
Speaker 1: eight three, and the testimony was big news. That testimony
Speaker 1: was also extremely damning to James g. Fair. One of
Speaker 1: his paramours testified during the hearing, and another one provided
Speaker 1: a deposition to the court. Fair claimed the whole thing
Speaker 1: was a political plot that had been orchestrated by his enemies,
Speaker 1: but he also didn't contest any of the charges that
Speaker 1: were made against him. He agreed to the divorce, and
Speaker 1: then when the dust settled, the judgment against him was
Speaker 1: really harsh. The conditions of the divorce stated that James
Speaker 1: would get custody of the couple's two sons, James and Charles,
Speaker 1: and they also had two daughters, Teresa and Virginia, who
Speaker 1: were to stay with their mother per the court's decision.
Speaker 1: But the big news was that Mrs Fair was also
Speaker 1: granted nearly five million dollars in cash and securities, which
Speaker 1: is believed to be the largest divorce settlement in history
Speaker 1: at that time. This was a huge loss for Fair,
Speaker 1: not just because of the public scandal and the dissolution
Speaker 1: of his family, but also because it led to the
Speaker 1: dissolution of his very successful long term business partnership. William
Speaker 1: S O'Brien had died in eighteen seventy eight, but McKay
Speaker 1: and Flood had sided with Teresa in the divorce. Things
Speaker 1: had already become strained when Fair had started working as
Speaker 1: a senator. While he was in Washington, Theresa would look
Speaker 1: to McKay for support in California, and by helping her,
Speaker 1: mackay had made Fair feel insulted. Since these three men
Speaker 1: couldn't untangle their business dealings, Fair instead contented himself by
Speaker 1: giving his business associates some backhanded compliments in the press. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would say, you know, things along the lines are like, oh,
Speaker 1: they've done so well for themselves, considering you know, they
Speaker 1: started out poor, stupid humans like they did. It was
Speaker 1: just really unkind to them. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: next about some of the family drama that swirled around
Speaker 1: the Fairs after the divorce. But first we are going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break in here from one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors. So Fair's daughters after the divorce were raised
Speaker 1: by their mother, Teresa, and she raised them to be
Speaker 1: educated and well mannered. Fair could not really be bothered
Speaker 1: to do the same for his sons, and that had
Speaker 1: di astris consequences. His son Jimmy developed a serious drinking problem,
Speaker 1: which was often reported in the press, including what sounds
Speaker 1: to me like a terrifying night when he drank twenty
Speaker 1: cocktails in one sitting and a doctor had to be
Speaker 1: called because he passed out. Jimmy actually died very young,
Speaker 1: and his cause of death was reported entirely differently from
Speaker 1: paper to paper. Some claimed that he died of acute alcoholism,
Speaker 1: others stated that he had died of suicide. Fairs relationships
Speaker 1: with his surviving children were strained when his oldest daughter, Teresa,
Speaker 1: who went by Tessey, got married in a high profile
Speaker 1: society wedding fair. Was not invited, although he claimed that
Speaker 1: he sent the newly weds a million dollars as a
Speaker 1: wedding present, even though he had not been invited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's unknown if that actually happened or if it was
Speaker 1: something he just said to the press to like stir
Speaker 1: up their interests. He kind of liked to be in
Speaker 1: the press um, but he definitely didn't go to the
Speaker 1: wedding fair. Retired from politics after his first term ended
Speaker 1: in seven and then he settled into the work of
Speaker 1: managing his real estate interests in San Francisco in the
Speaker 1: surrounding area. He bought more properties, particularly money making properties
Speaker 1: like office buildings and retail spaces that would generate rental income,
Speaker 1: and all of his rental agreements put the onus of
Speaker 1: maintenance and upkeep on the renters, so he was able
Speaker 1: to keep most or all of that rent money rather
Speaker 1: than funneling it back into property improvements, and this gave
Speaker 1: him something of a slum lord reputation. His properties were
Speaker 1: known for being run down, but he always claimed that
Speaker 1: the real estate taxes were just far too high to
Speaker 1: allow him any budget for refurbishment. His wife, Theresa Fair,
Speaker 1: died in the Fair's son, Charlie, tried to get an
Speaker 1: advance on the trust fund that was set up in
Speaker 1: her will in order to pay off debts that he
Speaker 1: had accrued purchasing race horses. Charlie had also developed a
Speaker 1: dependency on alcohol, and in a hasty move, he married
Speaker 1: a young woman who was rumored to be running a
Speaker 1: brothel out of her home. All of this caused a
Speaker 1: rift between Charlie and his sisters, as well as between
Speaker 1: Charlie and his father. And James Fair had always been
Speaker 1: a drinker. His sons inherited their problems with alcohol from him,
Speaker 1: but in these later years of his life his reliance
Speaker 1: on alcohol increased significantly. He also ate voraciously and not
Speaker 1: in a healthy way. He started each day with four
Speaker 1: boiled eggs, a dozen slices of toast, a steak, and coffee.
Speaker 1: And the heavy meals and the heavy drinking really took
Speaker 1: a toll on his health. And as he began to
Speaker 1: reckon with the reality of his mortality, he also decided
Speaker 1: to reconcile with his son Charlie. By Fairs health started
Speaker 1: to decline rapidly, but even so he remained a contrarian.
Speaker 1: When his pastor visited to discuss the sermon that he
Speaker 1: might give at fairs funeral service, it made the Silver
Speaker 1: Magnets so furious that he got out of bed. He
Speaker 1: put on his work clothes and he watched his office
Speaker 1: to work, and he did that for two more days,
Speaker 1: but those were his last trips out of the house.
Speaker 1: Even though he knew that he was probably going to
Speaker 1: die soon, having someone else tell him that just made
Speaker 1: him irate. Um so he kind of wanted to prove
Speaker 1: them wrong. But uh time eventually caught up with him.
Speaker 1: He caught what seemed initially to just be a cold
Speaker 1: in December, but he couldn't seem to recover from it.
Speaker 1: He was also diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease, and
Speaker 1: soon after that illness, around Christmas of December, he fell
Speaker 1: into an unconscious state from which he never awoke. On December,
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 an 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 find only accept Charlie's wife, but
Speaker 1: apparently 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. He left his
Speaker 1: sisters Mary Anderson and Margaret Jay Caruther's two thousand dollars each,
Speaker 1: as well as fifty thousand dollars to his brother William
Speaker 1: Fair and twenty thousand dollars to his brother Edward. Orphan
Speaker 1: asylums were also beneficiaries. Fair made provisions for orphanages run
Speaker 1: by different religious denominations in the city of San Francisco
Speaker 1: to each have their own bequest. Those are not massive bequests.
Speaker 1: They were large for the time, but when you consider
Speaker 1: how much money he was doling out, it kind of
Speaker 1: seems like I should give some to charity so people
Speaker 1: don't think of a jury. It's like, here have two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty thousand dollars. Oh you orphans thousand. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: not judging, yes, I am um. Fair also put some
Speaker 1: really interesting stipulations into his will about potential efforts to
Speaker 1: break said will. So, according to how it was written,
Speaker 1: if any of his children contested the will, their share
Speaker 1: would automatically go to the other two siblings, and if
Speaker 1: anyone came forward claiming either to be James Phair's illegitimate
Speaker 1: child or claiming to be a common law wife. They
Speaker 1: would just be issued fifty dollars and get nothing more.
Speaker 1: What Fair didn't anticipate with those stipulations was all three
Speaker 1: of his children contesting the will in a sort of
Speaker 1: unified front. None of them wanted to deal with trustees
Speaker 1: and an income that was doled out from a trust.
Speaker 1: All of them wanted to just have their inheritance, and
Speaker 1: then to make matters even more contentious, the will vanished
Speaker 1: from the county Clerk's office just a month after James
Speaker 1: Fhair died. It was replaced with a blank piece of
Speaker 1: paper in the envelope that the will had been filed in.
Speaker 1: A lot of people quit were questioned as police tried
Speaker 1: to piece together who had access to the envelope who
Speaker 1: could have made the switch. Nothing came of the investigation,
Speaker 1: and the will was never recovered, and the trustees claimed
Speaker 1: that the Fair children must have taken the will so
Speaker 1: that the estate would be split among them. The siblings
Speaker 1: believed that the trustees had stolen the will because they
Speaker 1: knew that it would be revealed as fraudulent, and as
Speaker 1: all of these accusations were made and the investigation stalled,
Speaker 1: a woman named Neddie Craven, who was the principle of
Speaker 1: the Mission Grammar School, came forward and claimed that she
Speaker 1: had a will that Fair maide after the one that
Speaker 1: had disappeared. This was a handwritten will, so the press
Speaker 1: nicknamed it the pencil Will, and it left the estate
Speaker 1: to the children. The will had allegedly been written because
Speaker 1: Mrs Craven had spoken to James Fair about a bill
Speaker 1: that was related to school teachers pension funds, and he
Speaker 1: had written this copy to include a bequest of fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to the pension fund. While the Fair family
Speaker 1: initially supported Mrs Craven and her documents, soon she produced
Speaker 1: more hand and written 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 to for a small sum of cash. And when
Speaker 1: she initially appeared with a handwritten will that seemed to
Speaker 1: convey 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, wait a minute. And then she
Speaker 1: was like, and I'm his common law wife. They're like
Speaker 1: hold the phone. And it became like a whole big,
Speaker 1: crazy thing. But as the craven issue receded, numerous other
Speaker 1: claimants to Fair's life and fortune emerged. Multiple women claiming
Speaker 1: to have been engaged or common law married to James
Speaker 1: Fair came forward, as well as a number of people
Speaker 1: claiming to be his children. The nineteenth century passed into
Speaker 1: the twentieth century before this will was settled and the
Speaker 1: Fair children finally got their inheritance. So really, a lot
Speaker 1: of people liked him. He was capable of being friendly
Speaker 1: with pretty much everybody, even making people he had never
Speaker 1: met before feel like they were his old friends. His
Speaker 1: career in minding had been so successful in part because
Speaker 1: he treated everybody the same, regardless of whether they were
Speaker 1: a wealthy executive or a worker down in the mind.
Speaker 1: But that was only one side of his personality. The
Speaker 1: other side is a Fair that was fairly conceded about
Speaker 1: his own skills and intellect, so in some ways it
Speaker 1: kind of seems like he treated most people equally because
Speaker 1: he saw everyone as equally less impressive than himself. He
Speaker 1: was not above taking advantage of someone that he thought
Speaker 1: was foolish in business, and he would later crow about
Speaker 1: business deals that were far more favorable to him than
Speaker 1: the other involved party. He was shrewd and manipulative even
Speaker 1: with his family members. At one point, he gave a
Speaker 1: fake tip to his wife about a stock, knowing that
Speaker 1: she would not only buy with her own personal savings,
Speaker 1: but also tell other people about him. And when all
Speaker 1: of those people started buying and the stock was hot,
Speaker 1: Fair sold his shares and made a profit. His wife
Speaker 1: ended up losing her life savings, and he was not
Speaker 1: especially sympathetic about that loss, which might be another reason
Speaker 1: that she wanted to divorce him, and another thing that
Speaker 1: would be in ethics class. Yes, that ability to ingratiate
Speaker 1: himself to other people and just charm them to pieces
Speaker 1: was very real, though, and it was something that he
Speaker 1: really used to his advantage. A lot of his most
Speaker 1: successful business dealings were built around relationships that he had
Speaker 1: fostered with this very genial side to his personality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was definitely two men in one uh the obituaries
Speaker 1: that appeared in various papers after James G. Fair died
Speaker 1: all noted what an accomplished man he was, how astute
Speaker 1: his 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, and 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 beast? Do you have some listener mail?
Speaker 1: I do have mail, and it's short and sweet, but
Speaker 1: it's actually savory. Is from our listener, whose name I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how to pronounce. I'm going to guess theren
Speaker 1: who writes, Hello, ladies, thank you for the hard work
Speaker 1: you do. Even though I've only been a listener for
Speaker 1: about six months, I've loved everything I've heard, and I'm
Speaker 1: slowly making my way through every episode. The reason I'm
Speaker 1: writing is I recently listened to your archived episode on
Speaker 1: Cheese while working on a report on Wisconsin with the
Speaker 1: main focus being it's cheese. This was completely unintentional and unplanned,
Speaker 1: but I slowly grew more and more hungry for cheese
Speaker 1: as I worked on the report and listened to the episode.
Speaker 1: After finishing, I ran to the refrigerator and grabbed any
Speaker 1: cheese I could find. This was at eleven three pm. Anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks again for all you do. It helps me make
Speaker 1: my schoolwork, hobbies, and commute much less monotonous. I see
Speaker 1: no issue with eating cheese far later. It's a good
Speaker 1: thing I am not a magua, because I would turn
Speaker 1: into a monster's kremlin if you would like. If you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us, you can do so
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at Houston Works dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find us everywhere on social media as Missed in History.
Speaker 1: Missed in History dot com is also the address for
Speaker 1: our website, so that is the u r L Missed
Speaker 1: in History dot com. If you would like to subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show, we highly encourage doing so. You can
Speaker 1: do that on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: History Class is a production of I Heart Radios. How
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