He was a member of the Willamette Cattle Company that brought livestock to Oregon and built the first brick house in the United States west of the Rocky Mountains.

[3][4] As a sailor, his last trip was aboard the whaleship Kitty, which he left at Monterey, California, in 1833 where he joined up with fur trapper Ewing Young.

[4] In 1835, George Gay returned to the Oregon Country with a party led by John Turner and included William J.

[5] Gay and the others, led by Young, traveled to California by boat to purchase cattle and then overland back to the Willamette Valley.

[7]Edwards stated that two members of the party stripped the murdered man of his clothes and left his body lying naked.

[8] They had nine children: Mary Ann, Joseph Witcum, John Kirby, Alfred, Paul George, William Edouard, Adaline Bellay, Louisa and Henri St.

[3] US Naval Officer Charles Wilkes, who met Gay in 1841, called Gay "a useful member of society in this small community: he gelds and marks cattle, breaks horses in, and tames cows for milking, assists in finding and driving cattle,–in short, he undertakes all and every sort of singular business."

He also wrote that Gay "told me he bore the Indians no love, and is indeed a terror to them, having not unfrequently applied Lynch law to some of them with much effect.

[15] George Kirby Gay lost his fortune and died poor on October 7, 1882, at the age of 72 and was buried on his property near Wheatland, Oregon.

[16] A granite and bronze marker placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution on the Yamhill-Polk County line on Oregon Route 221 commemorates the location of Gay's home and gravesite and his involvement in the Champoeg Meetings.