Mission Susan Gay was the daughter of William Gay (1812–1868) and his wife, Charlotte Grace Elizabeth, born Pedersen and the granddaughter of William Gay, the last Falmouth Agent of the General Post Office Packet Service (Old Falmouth, pp 139–140, 204-206), who retired in 1842.
Wilson Fox helped her with the Chronology. In her preface, she acknowledges help from them and other Falmouth notables. She ends the preface
"I should mention that this little work is simply a Collecteana, and has no greater pretension". page x.
In 1910 or 1911, she was interviewed by Walter Evans-Wentz concerning folktales heard from the peasants around her home at Crill, near Falmouth, published in The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries.
