William Fairfax

William Fairfax was born October 30, 1691 in Toulston Hall, Yorkshire, England, the second son of Henry Fairfax of Toulston. He died September 3, 1757 at his Virginia estate 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 … , age sixty-five.

Career arc

William Fairfax served as a Royal Navy officer and as a colonial customs officer in the Bahamas and Massachusetts before relocating to Virginia in 1734 at the invitation of his cousin Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron — the proprietor of the five-million-acre Northern Neck of Virginia, the immense proprietary tract granted by Charles II to William Fairfax’s great-grandfather Thomas, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, in 1649.

In Virginia, William served as Lord Fairfax’s agent — managing the proprietary land office in Belvoir, conducting boundary surveys, and overseeing the rent rolls of the Northern Neck grants. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses representing Prince William County and later Fairfax County (which was named for the family in 1742), and rose to President of the Council of Virginia — the highest civilian office in the colony short of the Royal Governor.

Belvoir Plantation

In approximately 1741, William Fairfax built Belvoir Manor on a 2,200-acre tract of the Northern Neck proprietary lands on the Potomac’s western bank — the southern Northern Neck parcel that a century and a half later would carry the Richmond Highway Place Richmond Highway ~8,656-acre U.S. Army installation along Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, established 1917 as Camp A.A. Humphreys, renamed Fort Humphreys 1922, renamed Fort Belvoir 1935 in … U.S. Army installation name forward. The estate took its name from the French belle voir — “beautiful view” — referencing the manor’s commanding bluff over the Potomac.

Mentorship of George Washington

Belvoir’s location four miles downriver from Mount Vernon — Augustine Washington’s plantation, inherited by William Fairfax’s son George William Fairfax’s brother-in-law Lawrence Washington and eventually by Lawrence’s half-brother George Washington Person George Washington b. 1732 · d. 1799 Planter, military commander, and first President of the United States. Master of Mount Vernon from 1761 until his death in 1799, and a regular presence in Alexandria, which he … — placed William Fairfax in the immediate Washington-family social orbit. William became a mentor and patron of young George Washington across the 1740s and early 1750s:

• In 1748 William’s son George William Fairfax invited the sixteen-year-old Washington to accompany the survey team mapping the western Northern Neck — Washington’s first professional surveying expedition.
• In 1749 William recommended the seventeen-year-old Washington for appointment as surveyor of Culpeper County, the public office that established Washington’s surveying career.
• In 1753 William supported Washington’s appointment as adjutant of the Virginia Militia — the military commission that launched Washington’s pre-Revolutionary military career.

The Fairfax–Washington tie was both professional and intimate. Washington’s most famous surviving love letter was written in 1758 to Sally Cary Fairfax, the wife of William’s son George William Fairfax — a letter that has been read by historians as among the most ardent and conflicted personal correspondence surviving from Washington’s life. ^[1] Source 1 Mount Vernon — William Fairfax Website

Death and succession

William Fairfax died at Belvoir on September 3, 1757. The estate passed to his son George William Fairfax, who with his wife Sally departed for England in 1773 — the political pressures of the looming colonial-imperial break making continued residence in Virginia untenable for a Loyalist landowning family. The Fairfaxes never returned. Belvoir Manor burned in 1783 in the immediate post-Revolutionary period and the brick ruins were finally reduced to foundation traces by an 1814 lightning strike.

Legacy in the corpus

William Fairfax is the corpus’s anchor figure for the colonial Northern-Neck proprietary tract — the eighteenth-century administrative geography whose Cameron / Fairfax / Belvoir place-names still organize modern Northern Virginia: Cameron Run, Cameron Street, Cameron Valley, 4800 Duke Street Place 4800 Duke Street 164-acre former U.S. Army installation on Duke Street, active 1942–1995. Headquartered the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Mapping Agency, and elements of the U.S. Army … , Fairfax County, Fairfax City, the Fairfax County Parkway, and Richmond Highway Place Richmond Highway ~8,656-acre U.S. Army installation along Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, established 1917 as Camp A.A. Humphreys, renamed Fort Humphreys 1922, renamed Fort Belvoir 1935 in … itself. The proprietary apparatus he managed for his cousin Lord Fairfax is the pre-municipal land-tenure foundation that the modern Alexandria-and-Mt-Vernon-corridor built on top of.