Harrison Genealogy Repository

Notes

Was the Virginia agent for his cousin, Thomas 6th Lord, 1733-1757. He served in Spain under Col.Martin Bladen; afterwards, 1709, in the navy with his cousin, Admiral Robert Fairfax of Steeton. In 1718, went to Bahamas, and was Judge Advocate under Gov. Woods Rogers. Removed to Salem, Mass. 1725, and was Collector of Customs there till 1733. Built Belvoir, 1735. Made County Lieutenant of Fairfax, member of King's Council, 1744, and President, 1752-1757.

"William was educated at Lowther School, under the auspices of Lord Lonsdale. During the War of Spaniard Succession he served in the navy under Sir John Jennings and participated in the expedition against the island of Providence in the Bahamas. In 1712, he was back in London borrowing money from his mother preparing to enter colonial service. His first post was with John Company in India. During his stay India he married and in 1717 returned with his wife to London. He wrote in January of that year that his sister had come to visit his wife. Before his departure in April 1718, he wrote his mother that he was leaving his wife in England "where she was indeed a stranger." Travelling to the Bahamas with Captain Woodes Rogers, the first royal governor of the islands, Fairfax was by 1724 acting as president of the court at Nassau. There he also served as secretary of state and acting governor. There also he married Sarah, daughter of Major Thomas Walker, on March 27, 1724; and in 1725 and 1726 his sons George, William and Thomas were born. His daughters Anne (who married Lawrence Washington) and Sarah (who married John Carlyle of Alexandria) were born in Salem, Massachusetts, at which place in 1729 William was appointed Collector of Customs. The Salem entries in his guest book begin on December 19 of that year. This guest book, acquired by him after 1721, is still in existence. Written on the blank pages of Thoresby's "Topography.....of Leeds," printed in 1715, the book was first the property of Rev. Miles Gale of Yorkshire. After his death his son Christopher, Chief Justice of the Bahamas, brought it to Nassau. Gale gave it to Fairfax who in turn took it to Salem and Virginia. From there it traveled back to England with William's son and was sold at auction after George William's wife died in 1811. In the twentieth century it was purchased by a descendant and brought back to Virginia again. In January 1731, two years after they had come to Salem, Williams' wife died. Christopher Gale, who was visiting in Salem, took six-year-old George William, the eldest child, back with him to relatives in England. William wrote them asking "indulgence (for) a poor West India boy." Thomas, the younger brother, may have stayed in Massachusetts. He became a midshipman on H.M.S. Southern Castle, the captain of which was a former shipmate of William Fairfax. ‘He was continually afloat from the age of fourteen until he was killed at twenty' off the Indian coast in 1746. In compliance with his wife's dying wish, William was soon remarried to her friend Deborah Clarke of Salem. Deborah was painted by Simbert; her portrait hangs today at the Essex Institute. The Fairfaxes did not remain long at Salem. Back in England, Lord Fairfax had decided to protect his own interests in Virginia by making his cousin the agent for the proprietary. William sailed from Salem on June 17, 1734, for Virginia, where he also became Collector of Customs for the South Potomac. In September he became a justice of the Westmoreland County Court and that same month obtained power of attorney from Lord Fairfax. According to the Land Office records of the Norther Neck, during the time Fairfax acted as agent, his family acquired 2,000 acres in Virginia. His inclusion as justice of the King George County Court in March 1737 marked his move to the vicinity of Falmouth. He lived across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg about a mile above Falmouth at ‘Stanstead,' which belonged to Charles Carter. Only a smokehouse and kitchen remain today, although there is a later house on the property. By 1739 William Fairfax had purchased 400 acres of land on a branch of Pohick Creek although he was then still living in Hanover parish, King George County. He paid Edward Washington L30 for this tract, and bought another in November 1741, from Rev. Charles Green of Truro Parish. That tract had 320 acres. By July of 1741, Fairfax had established the Proprietor's Land Office at his plantation, Belvoir in what was then Prince William County. That year he was a justice of the Prince William court and a member of the Virginia Assembly. Belvoir was a plantation on the neck of land between Dogue Creek and Accotink Creek, now included within the military post which bears its name. The only surviving description of the house is an advertisement from the Pennsylvania Gazette which appeared in October 1774, after the family had returned to England. ‘To be rented from year to year or for a term of years, Belvoir, the beautiful seat of the Hon. George William Fairfax, Esq., on the Potowmack in Fairfax County, Virginia. The mansion is of brick two stories high with four convenient rooms and a central passage on the lower floor, five rooms and a large passage on the second. Servants' hall and cellar below. Convenient to it are offices stables and coachouse; adjacent is a well-furnished garden stored with a great variety of fruits, all in good order. Appertaining to the tract on which the house now stands and which contains 20000 acres of land are several valuable fisheries and a good deal of cleared land. The terms may be known of Col. Washington, who lives near the premises.' When in 1742 a new county was formed out of Prince William and named in honor of Lord Fairfax, William became the first county lieutenant and presiding justice of the county court. The earliest land grant he issued as proprietor's agent dated in Fairfax county was 2 Nov 1742. From 1741 to 1743, he was a member of the House of Burgesses, and in November of that year, he was chosen as a member of the Governor's Council. In the next election he assisted his new son-in-law Lawrence Washington in a successful campaign for the vacant seat in the Assembly. Governor Gooch commented in 1744 in al letter to the Lords of Trade that Fairfax lived the greatest distance from Williamsburg (150 miles), ‘to which place he never comes but when sent for.' At Belvoir, family events kept him occupied. George William returned from his schooling in England in 1746. Now 21, he sought to impress his new friend George Washington by referring to the Fairfax Mansion as a ‘tolerable cottage' in a ‘wooded world.' Although young Fairfax was 7 years his elder, the two became lifelong friends. That same year, William's second son, Thomas the midshipman, was killed at sea. William lost his wife in 1747, just as Lord Fairfax in England decided to return to Virginia and presaged his arrival by sending three hunting dogs as a nucleus of a fox-hunting pack. Lord Thomas lived for a year at Belvoir, while young George William became a burgess and attended the 1748-1749 session in Williamsburg. There he courted and married Sally Cary, bringing home a new mistress for the plantation. In 1750, William Fairfax made a trip to England, probably to place his younger son, William Henry, in Beverley Grammar School, while in July 1752 his daughter Anne became a widow when Lawrence Washington died, and within six months had remarried. With all of this domestic upheaval it must have been a relief to return to political affairs. When Governor Dinwiddie took office; William Fairfax became President of the Council. They had already been associates in the affairs of the Ohio Company; now their relationship became even closer. When in September of 1753, William was in Winchester at a conference with the Indians, he acted as godfather to Chief Half-King's son and named the child Dinwiddie. Perhaps the governor was returning to the compliment when in November he chose as messenger to the French on the Ohio the protege of Fairfax, 21 year old George Washington. To Governor Sharpe of Maryland, Dinwiddie wrote that he had sent ‘a person of distinction' on this mission. Local affairs also occupied his attention. He was vestryman of Truro Parish, a County Justice, and was petitioning to build a grist mill on Difficult Run in 1751. On his land near Tysons Corner, the county courthouse was built, before the court moved to the new town of Alexandria. He found time, however, to donate two guineas to the Talbot County Charity Work School in Maryland. To Washington, who was by now struggling with the Indians on the frontier, he found time to write reassuring letters. In late August of 1757, he fell ill. The family did not consider it serious for 6 days, but within a few hours, he was dead. On September 15th the Maryland Gazette reported: ‘On the second, died at his seat on Patowmack, greatly and justly regretted, the Honorable Col. William Fairfax, President of His Majesty's Council, etc., in whom were happily united the amiable qualities of a polite Gentleman and a solid Christian.'" His will was dated 6 Feb 1755 in Fairfax County, VA. He, along with his second wife, Deborah (Gedny) Clarke, are buried at Fort Belvoir, where Belvoir Manor used to stand.