Bernice & Roy Hail

Roy Lee Hail

Frances “Fannie” Tilton Hail

Frances “Fannie” Tilton Hail is my great-great grandmother. She was born in Randolph, Missouri on 2 January 1868 to James B. Tilton and Martha Crutchfield. James was a carpenter and contractor. Fannie had one sister, Norah, born in 1870.

Fannie came to California in her early teens in a covered wagon from Missouri, in 1876. She worked in her mother’s boardinghouse growing up. By my guess, she married James Hail in the late 1880s or early 1890s. This was her second marriage, her first with a man named Terrill. She would marry for a third time to a man named John (Jack) Becker. I don’t know any of the circumstances of her three marriages, unfortunately. My research shows that James Hail died on 20 August 1908 in Athens, Texas. But with him, she had two children, Howard (b. 1891) and my great-grandfather Roy Lee (1894-1929).