Background
James G. Fair was born on December 3, 1831, in Clogher, County Tyrone, the son of James Fair, who was himself an Irishman of Scotch descent. His mother, a Scot, was named Graham.
Businessman engineer politician
James G. Fair was born on December 3, 1831, in Clogher, County Tyrone, the son of James Fair, who was himself an Irishman of Scotch descent. His mother, a Scot, was named Graham.
Brought to Illinois at the age of twelve, Fair there acquired a respectable education.
Following the 1849 Gold Rush, Fair traveled to California. Canny and acquisitive, he bothered little with the placer gold, but searched always for the quartz from which it came.
Before he was thirty he had a mill on the Washoe in Nevada, and thereafter as he grew in financial stature he was identified with Nevada and California. The vast deposits of auriferous quartz known as the Comstock lode had been discovered before Fair reached Nevada, and for nearly fifteen years it yielded pocket after pocket, the grand but uncertain contents of which kept hysterical speculation alive. This was a sort of mining in which the individual miner, without capital or machinery, had no chance, whereas the mining company and the banking interests behind it might profit from both the output of ore and the greed of a speculative public.
The San Francisco bankers controlled Nevada development until Fair and his associates (among whom John W. Mackay was most prominent) captured a group of their holdings, organized them around their own new Bank of Nevada, and stumbled upon the silver and gold pocket of the Consolidated Virginia Mine. This has been thought to be the most valuable single ore pocket ever found. It was Fair’s persistent pursuit of a thin meandering vein which led to its discovery in a rock chamber of vast dimension.
In March 1873 its yield began to unsettle the market for both metals, and it released so much silver bullion as to induce a great political controversy over the monetary use of that metal. In the next six years the owners took more than one hundred million dollars out of the mine before it was exhausted. Fair held on to most of his share, and converted it not only into luxurious living but into land, buildings, railroads, and other steady sources of income.
Several of the Comstock millionaires (Jones, Sharon, Stewart) found their way to the United States Senate, and Fair’s turn came when in 1881 a Democratic Nevada legislature elected him for a six-year term. He made no impression on the Senate save to advertise it as a haunt of millionaires, and he rarely took part in its debates. But the gaudiness and irregularity of his life and the social ambitions of his family, to which his wealth allowed full gratification, attracted much attention for two decades.
In his last years, living alone in the Lick House, San Francisco, Fair sought what consolations he could find. His business affairs demanded attention, and in 1887 he was forced to take active charge of the Nevada Bank which had come close to shipwreck. He made several wills, some of which he destroyed. He had apprehensions concerning claimants upon his estate, having before him the litigation over the Sharon estate. He wrote into his will a denial that he was married, or that he had other heirs than the three surviving children by Theresa Rooney, but he left fifty dollars each to any widows or children who might after his death be successful in establishing a right. James Fair died on December 28, 1894, in San Francisco, California.
The miner, financier and U. S. senator, James Fair was credited with discovering the Big Bonanza, one of the richest pockets of gold and silver on the Comstock Lode. The Fairmont San Francisco hotel was built as a grand monument to Fair by his daughters Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt who named it in honor of their father. Construction began in 1902, but they sold their interests in 1906, days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Fair is remembered in Santa Cruz, California in the naming of Fair Avenue, and in San Francisco with Fair Avenue in Bernal Heights.
James Fair was elected by the Nevada legislature to the U. S. Senate in 1881. He was not much interested in Washington, where he promoted silver issues in the Senate at a time when a movement was afoot to demonetize silver. Fair only served one term due to his defeat in the 1886 election.
In 1861, James Fair married Theresa Rooney, who had been keeping a boarding house. She divorced him in 1883 on grounds of "habitual adultery" and brought up their four children on her own, with a very considerable settlement.
Virginia Graham Vanderbilt (Fair) was an American socialite, hotel builder/owner, philanthropist, owner of Fair Stable, a Thoroughbred racehorse operation, and a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family by marriage.
Theresa Alice "Tessie" Oelrichs (Fair) was an American socialite.
