Ferdinando Fairfax
Ferdinando Fairfax (born in 1766 at Shannon Hill, Jefferson County, Virginia (now West Virginia); died on 24 September 1820 at Mount Eagle, Fairfax County, Virginia) was a Virginia landowner and member of the prominent Fairfax family.
Life
He was the son of Bryan Fairfax and Elizabeth Cary, sister of Sally Fairfax. George Washington and Martha Washington who traveled to Towlston Grange[1] after his birth to stand as his godparents.[2] Ferdinando was also the heir to George William Fairfax.
He was a justice of the peace for Jefferson County, Virginia and was, at the same time, the largest slave owner in the County.[3]
From the 1770s onward, individuals in France, Britain, and North America developed plans to colonize freed black people as a way of encouraging emancipation. These individuals proposed to form colonies in Africa, in the Caribbean, or in the American West; notable proponents include Granville Sharp of England, LaFayette of France, and Thomas Jefferson of America. One of the first such plans came from four enslaved black men in New England, who petitioned the colonial government for permission to buy their own freedom and then transport themselves to a colony they wanted to found on the African coast.[4]
Fairfax offered his own "practicable scheme" for ending slavery through colonization when he developed his “Plan for Liberating the Negroes within the United States” in 1790. Many of these plans were similar in that they wanted the abolition of slaves to be gradual, they wanted the government to compensate the slave owners for the lost property, they wanted the government to pay to educate and prepare free blacks for life as independent people, and they wanted to colonize the freed slaves in a separate place from the white society. This was because most people at the time believed that the races would not be able to get along if they tried to live together.
Fairfax later squandered his inheritance on visionary schemes and squatters lawsuits.
Ferdinando married his first cousin Elizabeth Blair Cary, daughter of Wilson Miles Cary and Sarah Blair. The couple had children: George William Fairfax (born November 5, 1797), who married Isabella McNeil; Wilson Miles Cary Fairfax, who married Lucy Griffeth; Farinda Fairfax, who married Perrin Washington; Mary Fairfax who married Rev. Samuel Hagins, Sally Fairfax; Ferdinando Fairfax II, who married Mary Jett; Christiana Fairfax, who married Thomas Ragland; William Henry Fairfax; Thomas Fairfax; Archibald Blair Fairfax.[5]
Donald McNeill Fairfax was his grandson.
References
- ↑ Restored Towlston Grange, Great Falls Historical Society
- ↑ "Ferdinando Fairfax" | author= Barbara Rasumussen
- ↑ "Ferdinando Fairfax" | author= Barbara Rasumussen
- ↑ Guyatt, Nicholas (2016). Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation. New York: Basic Books. p. 197–224.
- ↑ du Bellet, Louise Pecquet (1907). "Some Prominent Virginia Families". Bell company.
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