Len Noy (also known as Len Noi and Ng Len Noy) was a Chinese potato farmer in the Marysville area in the mid-19th century. W. T. Ellis, Jr., for whom Ellis Lake was named, wrote of him in his autobiography Memories: My Seventy-Two Years in the Romantic County of Yuba, California:
| My father did a large business with the Chinese and extended them lots of credit and we never, as far as I can remember, ever lost a bill. There was at that time a Chinaman by the name of Len Noy who was a very large operator in raising potatoes near Marysville. He made plenty of money and had a wife, but decided that he was sufficiently affluent and an important personage to have a second wife with "little feet" so he went to China and brought back with him a very nice looking young Chinese girl about 20 years of age and with "small feet" which had been placed in that condition by firmly binding the feet with wrappings from an early age; this resulted in the woman being so badly crippled with such small feet that she could barely walk, but it was a sign of great beauty and attractiveness and it was notice to his countrymen of the husband's great affluence and importance. Len Noy had a good home on one of his ranch properties and installed his new wife therein, his first wife becoming second in importance and a servant to the first wife and perfectly satisfied in her new lowly position. Len Noy informed every one that he had paid $3000 for his new wife. Then followed several disastrous years for Len Noy; his potato crops were largely failures because of insufficient moisture, pests of different kinds, etc. My father had extended him credit to the extent of about $2500 and when New Year's arrived, Len Noy could not pay; he was exceedingly dejected and apologetic and contemplated selling his little foot wife; my father told him not to worry and to pay whenever he could; it took Len Noy about three years to pay off the debt and then he insisted upon giving the family some valuable presents. |
Len Noy married Yee Jin Tai ("Jenny"), the 16 year-old daughter of Hoy Loy, a merchant of San Juan in October 1883 in what was noted by the Marysville Daily Appeal (October 28, 1883), as the first Chinese wedding in Marysville.
Prior to the wedding, Hoy Loy and his wife were charged with cruelty for binding their daughter's feet and fined thirty dollars. According to the paper on Sept 21 and Sept 28, 1883, the parents were paid $600 by Len Noy for their daughter's hand in marriage.
Len Noy, his wife and son (Yum Sheun Lennuey) eventually moved to San Francisco. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, they relocated to Oakland. One of Len Noy's grandsons was Raymond Eng, a notable Oakland optometrist, community leader and politician.
