William Strange is a Kentuckian whose life has been one long devotion to the interests of farming, home and family. He laid the foundation of his success as a renter, and was quite well advanced in years before he was satisfied to invest his capital in land of his own. He is now retired and lives seven miles west of Lexington, on the Versailles Pike, at the old community of Fort Spring. Fort Spring now contains merely two stores and a blacksmith shop, and the remains of the old mill, once a prominent institution of that section, are still visible.

Mr. Strange was born on Mundy's Pike in Clover Bottom of Woodford County, July 25, 1848. The family were pioneers in the Clover Bottom community. His parents were John and Elizabeth (Smith) Strange, the former born in the same vicinity in 1826. The grandparents were Billie and Lucy (Kendrick) Strange, the former also a native Kentuckian, son of a pioneer said to have been a Revolutionary soldier, who came to Kentucky from Virginia. Billie Strange lived all his life in his native community, and was not an old man when he died, his wife, Lucy, surviving him to the age of eighty. The Strange family still maintain an interest in the old Clover Bottom Christian Church, and were organizers of that society. John Strange lived all his life there as a farmer, and died when about fiftynine. His wife, Elizabeth Smith, was a daughter of Richard Smith, and survived her husband about ten years. Of their ten children five are still living: David is on the old homestead in Clover Bottom, Lucy is the wife of Allen Jeff, near Pinkard, Miss Margaret lives at Lexington, the next in age is William and Mary Ellen is the wife of Will Chapman. Robert was a farmer at Clover Bottom and died in 1888. George died September 11, 1920, at the age of sixty-two, at his farm home at Midway, where his widow and three daughters still remain.

William Strange was reared and acquired his early advantages in his native community. At the age of twenty he married Zerelda Smith, aged sixteen, a second cousin of his own mother and daughter of Joshua and Elizabeth (Veach) Smith. Mr. Strange at the time of his marriage hired out to work for Harvey Hieatt, and remained in his employ for six years, at wages of $30 a month and board. After that he rented the Hieatt farm two years, and since then has lived in the Fort Spring community of Fayette County. He was a renter here for twenty-four years, being on the Davis farm eight years, and fifteen years on the farm of Mrs. Pattie Parker. The Parker farm contained 300 acres. During his tenancy Mr. Strange paid Mrs. Parker over $20,000 in rent, and he has estimated that the total he paid in rent money during the years of his experience amounted to fully $45,000, which is some measure and index of his earning capacity as a farm manager.

Several years ago when he left off renting Mr. Strange bought the old Berry farm of 11o acres. He paid $88 an acre for this, and still owns it. He built a good frame house at Fort Spring, on the Pinkard Pike. His farm is now regarded as one of the most valuable in that section of Fayette County, and he has refused $550 an acre for it. For the past ten years he has not lived on his own farm but at the home of his daughter, who owns the Rice farm of 100 acres. Eighty acres of the Rice farm was acquired in 1910 at .$140 an acre, while the remaining twenty was bought in 1919 at a cost of $400 an acre.

Mr. Strange is a man of pleasant manners, interested in his community, and its welfare, but has never sought the diversions of politics and has always been too busy to take part in any of the outdoor sports. He recalls only one fishing experience in his entire life. That was when he was ten years of age, when he accompanied his father and several others to a fishing haunt. One of the fishermen laid down his pole to light his pipe, and the boy William picked it up and within a minute had caught a fine fish and caught several more in quick succession. None of the other members of the party had any luck whatever, and the owner of the pole claimed the fish caught by young William, and that perhaps was one reason why fishing never appealed to him. He is a democrat in politics, a member of the Farmers Union, and the Pisgah Presbyterian Church. As a farmer he has made his success by diversified production of wheat, corn and particularly hemp, and always kept some cattle, sheep and hogs.

Mr. Strange lost his good wife in 1913, after they had been married forty-five years. He has two daughters. Elizabeth is the widow of I. T. Bridges, who died in 1912. Her two children are Anna May, Mrs. R. A. Scherer, of Lexington, and Clifford, a schoolboy. The other daughter, Anna, is the wife of F. M. Murray, operating Mr. Strange's 110 acre farm.

Ref. History of Kentucky, William Elsey Connelley and Merton Coulter