| Martha Ann “Fannie” Kay was the eldest daughter of Thomas Kay, founder of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill. She worked alongside her father assisting in the day-to-day work of mill operation and management.
Fannie Kay was born 29 Nov 1857 in Shipley, Yorkshire, England to Thomas Lister and Ann [Slingsby] Kay. She was the eldest of ten children born to the couple. In 1860, after her father had secured work as a weave foreman in Trenton, New Jersey, she and her mother immigrated to America.
Fannie was a tomboy who preferred climbing trees and other boyish pursuits to indoor play. She loved and admired her father and as she grew older often followed him to the mills where he worked. Her father worked for the Smith Woolen Company mills located in Newark, then Trenton. After the Trenton mill burned down, he accepted a three-year contract for the loom boss position at a mill in Brownsville, Oregon. He left his growing family behind, to follow him a year later. The arduous journey involved both sea and land transportation, including overland travel at the Isthmus of Panama. Fannie was 6 years old at the time.
Less than two years after opening, the original Brownsville Mill was destroyed by fire and Thomas Kay’s contract was terminated. He took work where he could find it, first at a mill being constructed near Dallas, Oregon. Then briefly, in Salem, followed by a return to Brownsville as the Eagle Woolen Mills Co. rebuilt on the original mill site. Here he oversaw set-up of looms and other equipment. Then from 1868-1872 the family moved to Ashland, Oregon for a mill superintendent position.
In 1872 came the opportunity to resurrect the old Brownsville Mill property and manage it. The Kay family accepted the challenge and along with business partners and family members including Fannie, commenced work. She was 15 years old. She remarked years later that, “I spent all of my spare time in what to me was the fascinating pursuit of learning all about the woolen mill.” The family’s investment and hard work paid off when the company dissolved in 1889 and Thomas Kay used the funds, his reputation, and experience, to build the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill in Salem, Oregon.
While in Brownsville, Fannie became acquainted with Charles P. Bishop, a clerk at the Brownsville Woolen Mills store. She accepted an invitation from him to attend the local July 4th celebration. The year was 1874. He later recalled, “after going to the Fourth of July celebration I could no longer say I didn’t have a girl, for Fannie and I began keeping company.” They were married two years later on 8 October 1876 in Brownsville. Three sons would be born to the couple, Clarence Morton, Royal Thomas, and Robert Chauncey.
In 1882, Charles or C.P. as he preferred, purchased a store in Crawfordsville with partner Robert Glass. Two years later, he moved his family to McMinnville where he opened a clothing store with Fannie’s brother Thomas B. Kay. Then in 1889 an opportunity arose to partner with his father-in-law to build a woolen mill in Salem, Oregon. C.P. joined Thomas Lister Kay and local businessman Squire Farrar as founding directors. What became the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill opened at full operation in March 1890.
It was truly a family enterprise for the Bishops and Kays; one to which each family member brought their skills and labor. While Fannie assisted her father in the day-to-day management of the mill, C.P. focused his efforts on the marketing and sale of TKWM products. The Bishop boys also worked, first as bobbin boys, then on rotation through each mill department as they learned the manufacturing process.
In 1891 Fannie and her husband purchased the Salem Woolen Mill store, an outlet for mill products and men’s clothing. Under their expert management, this business grew into one of the West’s finest stores for men, later renamed Bishop Clothing. In addition to this, C.P. also served as the mayor of Salem from 1891-1904 and later as a state senator during the 1915 and 1917 legislative sessions.
Both Bishops were active in the Republican Party and at different times served as delegates to National Republican Conventions, C.P. in 1916 and Fannie in 1924. Fannie herself ran for the state legislature in 1922 and served as the state chairman to the Republican Party for Women. She long held the belief that woolen mills needed tariffs so that American mills might compete with the lower wages paid to laborers in other countries.
The family were members of the Presbyterian Church and active in local civic organizations. Fannie was one of the organizers of the original Salem Women’s Club. In the 1920s they purchased a beautiful home at 765 Court St. which would be occupied by members of the Bishop family until it was willed to Willamette University in 1948 for use as a president’s residence.
In April 1900, Fannie’s father Thomas Kay died, an event that would alter the course of Bishop family history and regional textile manufacturing. Despite the years Fannie had spent at her father’s side running the mill, her brother Thomas B. Kay was chosen and elected president and general manager in a family/stockholder vote. This was a hard blow for Fannie and her sons, who had been trained by their Grandfather Kay for future management of the TKWM.
In 1908 the Bishop family began negotiations for the purchase and revitalization of a mill near Pendleton, Oregon. After the transaction was completed on 16 February 1909 and the mill incorporated under Bishop family ownership, Fannie’s two oldest boys Clarence and Roy moved to Eastern Oregon to manage the project. First came a new 3-story concrete structure to house mill operations, then machinery upgrades with a switch to Jacquard looms. Both brothers were involved in every step, from construction and equipment upgrades to the sale and marketing of their product, and often worked alongside their employees at the mill. Within three years the mill began to turn a profit. And it was only the beginning, by 1936 the Pendleton Company, owned and managed by the Bishops employed more than 1500 fulltime workers, processed 3-4 million pounds of wool annually and produced millions of dollars’ worth of woolen yarns and fabrics sold throughout the U.S. and Canada, according to the Capital Journal newspaper.
As Fannie expressed so well, in a letter dated July 1909 to her sons in Pendleton, “I feel no doubt of the final success. There is so much in your favor, it will be hard work and at times discouraging but…after years you will look back and see how it only gave you determination to overcome each difficulty as it appeared.”
In 1927, the family suffered tragedy, the loss of youngest son Chauncey, victim of a gun accident in Eastern Oregon. Then patriarch C.P. Bishop died 18 Nov 1941 in Salem, after an accident in the bathtub. Fannie herself died three years later 31 Dec 1944 also in Salem. The three were buried in the Bishop family plot in City View Cemetery. Fannie’s legacy continues to this day in the Pendleton Company where the example of her spirit, confidence, and strength of character has molded generations of Bishop family leadership. |
