Charles Fey

His father Karl worked as a sexton at the Ulm Minster cathedral and had fifteen children with Charles' mother Maria.

[2] As a teenager, Fey worked for a farming tool manufacturer, gaining his first skills, which heavily influenced his career.

[3] In 1877,[3] Charles Fey moved to France to work there, and spent some time in England too, before leaving for the United States at age twenty-three, where his uncle lived in New Jersey.

In the early 1880s, Fey had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; in accordance with scientific knowledge at the time, he moved to a warmer climate (Mexico) for a few years, before returning to San Francisco for a series of creosote treatments, which were successful.

"[4] After settling in San Francisco, he stayed there except for a brief spell in Mexico, to recover from a bout of tuberculosis in a warmer climate.