FAY, Jonas, patriot, born in Hardwick, Massachusetts, 17 January 1737; died in Bennington, Vermont, 6 March 1818. He received a good education, and became a physician. He was clerk of a Massachusetts company at Fort Edward in 1756, removed to Bennington in 1766, and became prominent among the settlers on the New Hampshire grants, going as their agent to New York in 1772, to lay their grievances before Governor Tryon. He was clerk of the convention of March 1774 that resolved to defend by force Ethan Allen, and the others who were outlawed by the legislature of New York. Dr. Fay was surgeon under Allen at Ticonderoga, and afterward in Colonel Warner's regiment. He was a member of the convention of January 1777, which declared Vermont an independent state, and drew up the declaration and petition to congress announcing the act and the reasons for it.

He was secretary of the Constitutional convention of July 1777, one of the council of safety, a member of the state council in 1778'85, judge of the Supreme Court in 1782, and of probate in 1782'7, and agent of the state to congress in January 1777, October 1779, June 1781, and February 1782. He published, in connection with Ethan Allen, a pamphlet on the New Hampshire and New York controversy (Hartford, Connecticut, 1780).

His son, Neman Allen Fay, born in Bennington, Vermont, in 1778; died there, 20 August 1865, was a cadet in the U. S. military academy from March 1807, till June 1808, when he was graduated and assigned to the artillery. During the war of 1812 he did garrison duty at various forts, and was mustered out on 15 June 1815. He was chief forage master of the northern division of the army in 1816'17, and U. S. military storekeeper at Albany, New York, from 1818 till 1842. He published an "Official Account of Battles Fought between the Army and Navy of the United States and Great Britain in 1812'15" (1815).