Early Life and Education
Fairfax was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He was the son of Sarah (née Walker), a woman of mixed race from the Bahamas, and Colonel Sir William Fairfax, who served as an English Customs agent in Barbados, as well as a justice and governor of the Bahamas. At his son's birth, William was working as the Customs Collector in Marblehead. Sarah's father Thomas Walker was Chief Justice of the Bahamas. In addition to George, the Fairfaxes had two daughters, Anne and Sarah. The father William was first cousin to Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. William's wife Sarah died January 21, 1731.
At Lord Fairfax's request, the senior Fairfax was reassigned to the colony of Virginia as customs agent. There he became a lieutenant of the County of Fairfax, and member and president of the council in Virginia (equivalent to lieutenant governor). William Fairfax also worked as a land agent for his cousin Lord Fairfax, managing his extensive holdings in the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Because of his son's mixed-race ancestry, William Fairfax worried about the reception of the boy by the London Fairfax family when he sent him to England.
"Col. Gale has indeed kindly offered to take the care of safe conducting my eldest son George, upwards of seven years old but I judged it too forward to send him before I had your's or some one of his Uncles' or Aunts' invitation, altho' I have no reason to doubt any of their indulgences to a poor West India boy especially as he has the marks in his visage that will always testify his parentage."
"West India" was a term used synonymously with Creole, as meaning mixed race; Sarah Walker's family was prominent in the Bahamas, but documents of the time suggest that her mother was of African or part-African ancestry.
After his family moved to Virginia, George William became a friend of George Washington, who was three years younger, and remained friends until Fairfax's death in 1787. Fairfax's sister Anne had married George Washington's older half-brother Lawrence in 1743, when George Washington was still an adolescent. Fairfax arranged for Washington to help him to survey the Virginia lands of his cousin, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.
Read more about this topic: George William Fairfax
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