Fayann Schmidt

• Interviewed in 2013, 2017, and 2019

Fayann Schmidt, born in 1951, grew up in rural Ohio. She married when she was approximately 20 years old. She had one child, a son. After her divorce in 1977, she earned a business degree in 1982 at Wright State University in Ohio.

Fayann Schmidt and her son, Jay Race (James Louis Race, III), moved to Florida to be nearer to her mother and one sister. When she had lived in Ohio, she had worked as an accountant. In Florida, she has held various jobs, including owning a recycling business. In 1987, she partnered with Morgana MacVicar, a cofounder of the lesbian residential community, the Pagoda, in St. Augustine, Florida. Fayann lived at the Pagoda with Morgana from 1987 until the 1990s, when they moved to Alabama to start another lesbian residential community, Alapine Village.

Fayann Schmidt graduated from Unity Urban Ministerial School in May 2017. She completed a one-year internship, and she was ordained in June 2018. Since then, she has been Associate Minister with Unity of Chattanooga. Her thirty-year relationship with Morgana ended in 2018. Fayann remains an officer of the company that she and Morgana cofounded, Sheeba Mountain Properties, Inc., which developed Alapine Village. Fayann Schmidt divides her time living in Jacksonville, Florida, and in Alabama.