FAY FAMILY

The Fay family papers consist mainly of the personal correspondence of Amy Fay, a pianist and the first president of the Women's Philharmonic Society of New York, and of her two nieces, the actress Amy Fay Stone and her sister, Margaret Stone Wright.

Born in 1844 in Bayou Goula, Louisiana, Amy Fay was the third of six daughters and the fifth of nine children of the Rev. Charles Fay and Emily (Hopkins) Fay of Louisiana and St. Albans, Vermont. She studied piano under Professor John Knowles Paine of Harvard and at the New England Conservatory of Music. From 1869 to 1875, she continued her lessons in Germany, where she studied with the most prominent teachers of Europe: pianists Tausig, Kullak, Liszt, and Deppe. Deppe's technique for piano study revolutionized AF's playing and served as the method she herself was to use for her students in the years to come. On returning to Boston, AF became well known for her piano "conversations" (recitals preceded by short lectures). She moved to Chicago and New York, where she was associated with the Women's Philharmonic Society of New York. She died in 1928.

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