The Fairfax family

The Fairfax interest in the Northern Neck of Virginia originated in the 1649 patent of Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, to roughly five million acres between the Potomac and the Rappahannock — a proprietorship that survived the Revolution to be partially extinguished only by the courts in the 1810s. From 1734 Lord Fairfax’s cousin William Fairfax Person William Fairfax b. 1691 · d. 1757 Colonial-era owner and builder of (c. 1741); cousin and Virginia agent of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, the Proprietor of the Northern Neck. President of the … (1691–1757) administered the proprietary from belvoir-plantation Place belvoir-plantation The c. 1741 manor house of on the southern Northern Neck proprietary tract — social anchor of the colonial Fairfax–Washington circle, where young was mentored by William Fairfax … on the Potomac just south of the future Alexandria. As proprietor’s agent, member and later president of the Virginia Council, and confidant of his neighbour Lawrence Washington and Lawrence’s half-brother George, William Fairfax was the central figure in the 1740s–1750s social and political networks out of which Alexandria itself emerged ^[1] Source 1 Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book .

William Fairfax’s children carried the family’s influence into the next generation by marriage:

• George William Fairfax (1729–1787) of Belvoir, the proprietor’s heir-presumptive in Virginia, was George Washington’s boyhood neighbour and patron; his absence in England during the Revolution led to Belvoir’s confiscation and ruin.
• Anne Fairfax married Lawrence Washington of Mount Vernon and, after his 1752 death, lived on at the estate until 1761; her remarriage and subsequent death cleared title for George Washington to inherit the property.
• Sarah Fairfax Carlyle Person Sarah Fairfax Carlyle b. 1728 · d. 1761 Second daughter of of Belvoir; in 1748 married , anchoring the Carlyles into the Fairfax network. Her sister Anne Fairfax was the wife of Lawrence Washington of Mount Vernon … married John Carlyle Person John Carlyle b. 1720 · d. 1780 Scottish-descent merchant born in Carlisle, England, in 1720; one of the eleven founding trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and builder of the stone Carlyle House at the head of what … in 1748, linking the Fairfaxes to the Carlyle merchant line; their daughter Anne Fairfax Carlyle Person Anne Fairfax Carlyle b. 1761 · d. 1778 Second surviving daughter of and ; married of Gloucester County, Va., in 1777 and died at seventeen the day her only son was born. carried the Fairfax name into the Whiting family of Gloucester County.
• William Henry Fairfax of the 28th British Regulars was killed with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham in September 1759.

Through the granddaughter Margaret Herbert Fairfax Person Margaret Herbert Fairfax d. 1858 Eldest daughter of and who in January 1800 married ; the surviving British Lords Fairfax of Cameron line descends from her in the maternal line. — herself a great-granddaughter of John Carlyle — the Alexandria Carlyle-Herbert line married back into the British title in 1800, and the surviving Lords Fairfax of Cameron descend from that match ^[2] Source 2 R. H. Spencer, "The Carlyle Family" (W&M Quarterly, January 1910) Book .