Deborah Fairfax

Biography

Deborah Clarke, daughter of Francis Clarke and his wife Deborah Gedney, was born 31 January 1708/9 in Boston, Massachusetts. She had an older sister also called Deborah born on 31 October 1705 and who died in infancy.

Deborah became the wife of William Fairfax, Esq.

Fairfax was appointed to the office of Collector of his Majesty's Customs for the South Potomac, and was, for a time, President of the Council of Virginia. He died 3 Sept., 1757, aged sixty-five years. Of his children by his first wife, who died in 1731, the eldest son, George William, born 1724, married Sarah Cary and died at Bath, England, 3 April, 1787, without issue; Thomas (R. N.) was killed in a naval fight with the French in the East Indies, 26 June, 1746, in the twenty-first year of his age, without issue; Anne, born at Salem, married, 1st (19 July, 1743), Lawrence Washington,* of Virginia (brother of Gen. Washington), and, 2d, Col. George Lee, descended from an old family of Merton-Regis in Shropshire, England; Sarah married John Carlyle, a merchant of Alexandria, Virginia.

By his second wife, Deborah Clarke, he had issue as follows:

1. 20 Bryan, m., 1st, Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Col. Jefferson Cary of Hampton, Va., and sister of the wife of his half-brother George William. During the French and Indian war he was in the military service of Virginia. He remained neutral during the Revolution, and in 1789 became an Episcopal clergyman. In 1793 on the death of Robert, seventh Baron Fairfax, the title devolved upon him, but he took no steps to secure his rights until 1798, when his lordship went to England and set forth his claim, which was confirmed by the House of Lords, in May, 1800. His lordship died in 1802, at Mount Eagle, near Alexandria, Va., and was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas, ninth Lord Fairfax, who was born 1762, and resided at Vaucluse, Fairfax County, Va., where he died 21 April, 1846.
2. 21 William Henry, Lieut. in the British Army, killed at Quebec, 1759 (unmar.).
3. 22 Hannah, m. Warner Washington, eldest cousin of Gen. Washington.

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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fairfax

From 1738 to 1741, William Fairfax and his second wife Deborah Clark lived along the lower Potomac River. He picked out a site for a home overlooking the river adjacent to the Washington family's estate, which was later known as Mount Vernon. Fairfax commissioned a two-story brick home, which was completed in 1741 and named Belvoir Manor. He and his descendants lived there for the next 32 years. He commissioned master carpenter Richard Blackburn to construct parts of Belvoir and other projects, and his friend may have also served in the long session of the House of Burgesses discussed below.

Historic documents and archeological artifacts found at Belvoir Manor attest to the elegant lifestyle enjoyed by the Fairfax family. The mansion, described in a 1774 rental notice, was spacious and well-appointed. Its furnishings consisted of "tables, chairs, and every other necessary article ... very elegant."[9] The Fairfaxes had imported ceramics from Europe and China to grace their tables.

William Fairfax's first two sons by his second wife both died in combat while serving the Crown: Thomas (1726–1746) was killed in action on 25 June 1746 (Old Style) against the French Navy off the coast of India, aged about 20, while serving as a newly enrolled midshipman in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Harwich (50 guns). Lieutenant William Henry "Billy" Fairfax died of wounds received during the British Army's capture of Quebec in fall 1759 during the Seven Years' War. The youngest son, Bryan Fairfax became an Anglican priest and would return to England to claim his inheritance, the title of Lord Fairfax of Cameron from his cousin Robert Fairfax, 7th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.

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In the spring of 1894, writer W. H. Snowden visited the Belvoir ruins and family cemetery and described the site in "Some Old Historic Landmarks of Virginia and Maryland: A Handbook for the Tourist over the Washington, Alexandria and Mount Vernon Railway" (Third edition, 1902):

In the wood near adjoining, rows of sunken mounds indicated the family burial place. A score of graves may still be counted, without stone or vestige of enclosure. The marble slabs which had marked the last resting places of William Fairfax and Deborah, his wife, the first master and mistress, and which had remained intact until a few years before the war, had been sacrilegiously broken up and carried away.

The inscription read as follows:

"Here rest the remains of Deborah Clarke Fairfax, who departed this troublesome life on the Fourteenth day of ____ 1747* in the sixty-seventh year of her age. She was the widow [sic: daughter] of Francis Clarke of New Salem, Massachusetts Colony, and the late wife of William Fairfax, Esq., collector of His Majesty's customs on the South Potomac, and one of the kings' honorable council of Virginia. In every station of life she was worthy of imitation. A faithful and loving wife. The best of mothers. A sincere and amiable friend. In all religious duties well instructed and observant, and has gone where only such virtues can be rewarded.

• the obelisk at the site gives Deborah Clarke Fairfax's death year as 1746.

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References

1. Essex Institute Historical Collections, Volume 16, By Essex Institute. Page 272-275 < GoogleBooks > THE FAMILY OF FRANCIS CLARKE.
2. Wikipedia contributors, "William Fairfax," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, < Wikipedia > (accessed March 4, 2024). In the Bahamas, William Fairfax married Sarah Walker (c. 1700 – January 21, 1731), the daughter of a former justice of the Vice admiralty court and acting deputy governor of the Bahamas. They had a son, George William Fairfax, followed by a daughter Anne (discussed below) and another daughter Sarah before Mrs. Sarah Fairfax died on January 21, 1731, in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The widower Fairfax then married Deborah Clarke, of Marblehead. Together they had three sons: Thomas, William Henry ("Billy") and Bryan, and a daughter Hannah.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Fairfax,_8th_Lord_Fairfax_of_Ca... Bryan Fairfax was the son of Col. William Fairfax (1691–1757) of Belvoir and Deborah Clarke (1708–1746). As a young man, Fairfax lived at Belvoir with his father who was the business agent for his cousin, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. His [half] brother, George William (1729–1787) and his wife, Sally Cary Fairfax (1730–1811), also lived there and were close neighbors to George Washington's Mount Vernon. As a young man, George Washington and his brother, Lawrence Washington (1718–1752), visited the Fairfax family at Belvoir often and Lord Fairfax employed Washington to join a surveying team of his western lands, in the valley of Virginia.[1]
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvoir_(plantation) Belvoir was the plantation and estate of colonial Virginia's prominent William Fairfax family. Operated with the forced labor of enslaved people,[3][4] it sat on the west bank of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, at the present site of Fort Belvoir. The main house — called Belvoir Manor or Belvoir Mansion — burned in 1783 and was destroyed during the War of 1812. The site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973 [1] as "Belvoir Mansion Ruins and the Fairfax Grave."
5. https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I3798...