Historical Background & Fairchild Genealogy

Charles the First was the inept king of a war-torn, violent and bloody England in the 1630s. In 1635, English colonization of Connecticut began as John Winthrop led his English settlers into Connecticut. The town of Windsor was founded by religious refugees from Dorcester, Massachusetts. New Haven was founded in 1638. In that same year, Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Puritans' Massachusetts Bay Colony because she was a dissident.

Englishman Thomas Fairchild, was about 28 years old when he left Cambridge, England in 1638 along with his group and their minister, the Reverend Adam Blakeman. They made it across the Atlantic Ocean and arrived on the coast of the small Connecticut colony. In 1639, they settled in the wilderness & founded Stratford, Connecticut. Thomas's first wife was one of three daughters of Robert Seabrook [who was quite old at his first coming to Connecticut] and of Alice Goodspeed Seabrook. The three sisters were born in Wingrave, Buckinghamshire, England. Thomas Fairchild's two sisters-in-law married Thomas Sherwood and William Preston of Giggleswick, Yorkshire. All were founders of Stratford in 1639.

Thomas Fairchild became a Deputy from Stratford to the General Court and served eleven sessions from April 1646 to October 1665. In those days this office was similar to that of an elected Justice of the Peace of today.

Thomas' son Samuel Fairchild born in 1640, was probably the first white child born in Stratford.

Thomas Jefferson was born in Philadelphia in 1643.

These were insanely chaotic and deadly times in Europe. Life was coarse, short and brutal. In 1642-47, civil war was raging in England. In 1649, Charles I was tried and beheaded; England was declared a Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. Between 1629 and 1642 over 60,000 Englishmen came to the New World, about half of them to the Puritan colonies. But immigration was curtailed by the outbreak of civil war in England, with massive bloodshed, executions by beheading and marching armies at war.

In 1662 Charles II, King of England married Catherine of Bragança, daughter of King João IV of Portugal.

Some Puritans from Connecticut settled in Newark, New Jersey.

In 1680, nearly a decade after his father's death, Samuel Fairchild married Mary Wheeler, daughter of Moses Wheeler. Samuel and Mary had a son named Samuel Jr., born in 1683. In January 1705, a year after his father's death in 1704, Samuel married Ruth Beach (daughter of John Beach and Hannah Staples Beach) .

Ruth and Samuel Fairchild Jr. had a son named Benjamin, who was born on March 21, 1721 in Stratford. When he was about 33 years old, Benjamin Fairchild married Melissa Hall, daughter of Joshua Hall of Fairfield, Connecticut. They had seven children: Peter, Ruth, Mary, Benjamin Jr., Joshua, Deborah and Isaac, who was born in 1771 in Stratford. This family lived for many years in Townsend, Norfolk Canada. Allegedly, the reason for Benjamin Fairchild's settling there in the first place was that he was a loyalist (Tory), siding with the English against the American independence. There was an old story about one of his sons, Benjamin Fairchild, Jr. who was taken prisoner by the Mohawk Indians and [many years later] was hired by the British government to interpret for them in doing business with the Indians. As far as I know, he was the only person in my family other than myself to become an interpreter/translator.

Benjamin's contemporaries in Canada around 1787 included respected Indian chieft of the Mohawk tribe, and white men Moses Mound and Caleb Reynolds.

Benjamin Sr. died in Canada in 1795.

In 1797, after his father's death, Joshua married Elizabeth Cooley Olmstead of Greenwich, Hampshire, Massachusetts. Their son Joshua, Jr. was born in Townsend, Norfolk, Canada.

Joshua, Jr. (also listed as Joshua Moroni Fairchild: the middle name may have been added later by his Mormon offspring) turned out to be a bit of a wastrel. His family moved to Niagara Falls in 1803/04, where his father operated a tavern. Young Josh would have been only eight years old. At the age of sixteen, when Joshua began to pick up wrong ideas, his parents sent him to live with his uncle Peter Fairchild, a somewhat important Baptist minister, at or near Townsend. Joshua later wrote, "I was raised in a wicked place, by the Falls of Niagara, and never heard a prayer or sermon preached until I was fourteen.

Joshua Fairchild, Jr. claimed that he had fought in the battle for Queenstown Heights. That was in October 1812, when he would have been only 15½ years old. Fighting was vigorous and bloody in this area. The Americans were pushed back and his father's tavern at Niagara was burned.

In 1818, Joshua Fairchild married Mary Skinner, the Baptist daughter of Benjamin Skinner. Presumably his uncle Peter Fairchild performed the marriage ceremony.

After the death of Joshua's first wife in August 1823, her parents took the three children to live with them in Townsend, Norfolk County, Canada. Joshua Jr. bought land at Table Grove in Vermont Township, Illinois. He married again and had a child named Harvey, born in 1824. He lived with this wife, Harvey's mother only about a year and a half..".... I was then 400 miles from my first children. I went for them and never saw my wife again."

Joshua Fairchild, Jr. married a third time to Prudence Fenner, a mormon widow with two children. "We lived together eight or ten years and were blessed with three children." In 1831, Joshua and Prudence went from Ohio with a group to northwest Missouri. Two sons were born to them: Alma and Moroni were born in Clay County, Missouri in 1833 and 1835 respectively.

Moroni Fenner Fairchild was born the 19th of September 1835 in Clay County, Missouri, the son of Prudence Fenner and Joshua Fairchild, Jr. His parents separated about 1837. He was the youngest of three children, having one sister, Elizabeth and one brother, Alma. These three children were raised by their mother after their father disappeared. In 1852, the three children went west with their mother in the Mormon 6th Company, under the command of Captain David Wood. They were among the Mormons who had been persecuted in Missouri and were compelled to flee.

On the 18th of January 1855, Moroni hooked up with Harriet Lucinda McMurray, who was born July 18, 1840 in Columbiana, Ohio. She was not yet fifteen years of age when they were married.· Harriet's older brother Joseph McMurray married Moroni's sister Betsy Fairchild. Moroni & Harriet had 15 surviving children: Moroni Joshua, Mosiah, Seymour, Adalaid, Isadora, Joseph (died after being dragged by a horse at age 12), John Harvey, Mary Arletta, Emma, Elneva, Rachel, Fanny Lucinda, Alice, Birdie Estella and Harriet Elizabeth. Mosiah Fairchild was my great-great grandfather.

I know very little about my great grandfather Mosiah Fairchild. I do know that he was Mormon, and in 1885, he married a Swedish Mormon woman named Augusta Fredricka Nielson. She was born in Mashult, Skaraborg, Sweden and was a daughter of Johannes Nilsson. She was almost 18 years of age when they married in Utah.

Mosiah sold his famous Fairchild liniment from a horse-drawn buggy around Idaho and northern Utah.· Mosiah was only 45 years old when he was killed by a steam locomotive in a railroad switching yard while returning home in a snowstorm with horse & buggy from Belleview, Idaho. Was it a suicide? His young wife was left a widow. *

provided by Andre´ Fairchild