Jonathan Fairchild

A tanner, of East Jewett, Greene County, New York, and twice an ancestor of Florence (Frost) McMillan: through his son Richard C. Fairchild, whose grandson George W. Frost (son of his daughter Elizabeth) married Lucy Bell, granddaughter of Jonathan’s son John (daughter of his daughter Adeline). Frances Fairchild Holbrook’s middle name presumably comes from this double descent.

The East Kill Valley Genealogy calls him “a tanner who had lived in Scott’s Patent, possibly the section in Cairo, before settling in East Jewett about 1800,” and says he died “on what is now the Alberti farm”; “A piece of fieldstone with the initials J. F. may mark his grave in this Old Cemetery” (source). Gilmore, from family correspondence: “Jonathan built the first tannery in Greene county, NY.” He was at Kinderhook, Columbia County, in 1790, and at Windham, Greene County, in 1810, a man over 45 with four boys whom his sons Henry, Edward, John and Richard fit (source). An early list printed by Beers has “Jonathan Fairchild 8” beside “Lemuel Woodworth 9” and “Matthew Winter 11,” the families of two of his sons’ wives (source).

He had two families, sixteen children by Gilmore’s count (2001): seven by Sarah Rich of Yonkers, married about 1769, who died in 1787 aged 36, and nine by his second wife Elizabeth, married about 1787: Benjamin (1788, Chatham), Henry (1791, “Scot Spatten”), Catherine (1792), Caroline, Jonathan, Edward (1797, Cairo), a son, John (1802 or 1803) and Richard C. (1808, East Jewett). Beach’s Early Settlers of East Jewett names Benjamin, Betsy, Harry, Catharine, Loretta, John, Edward and Richard. Three of the sons married into one family: Richard married Nancy Woodworth, Henry her sister Hannah, and Edward their double first cousin Sally Winter.

That Richard and John were his sons is probable, not proven: two compiled genealogies say so (W. B. Plume’s manuscript, which Gilmore says gave no sources, and the East Kill Valley Genealogy: “John Fairchild was the son of Jonathan”), with Beach’s list, the 1810 census, Henry’s administration of the estate and deeds between the brothers (Henry to Edward in 1826, Edward to Richard in 1840; whether the deeds themselves say “brother” Gilmore does not state). No record seen names Jonathan as their father.

Far off at Fairview Cemetery, Bridgewater, Oneida County, a family stone names a Jonathan Fairchild “who died 1815 … age 66, along with his wife Sarah Rich, who died 1787, age 36,” beside their daughter Ann (Fairchild) Page, who died in 1872 and very probably set it up (Gilmore 1991, p. 80). Gilmore 2001 takes it as his; it is the only witness to his age.

Where he came from. Gilmore 2001 makes him Jonathan, born at Norwalk, Connecticut, on 29 August 1744, son of Thomas Fairchild and Ann Raymond, from research done for a descendant in 1993. The stone’s “age 66” and the East Kill Valley Genealogy’s “b. about 1751” are against it, and nothing yet ties the tanner to Norwalk by record, so the link is given here as possible (see his father’s entry for both sides). Everything above him on these pages rests on it: the Fairchilds of Norwalk and Stratford, the Raymonds, the Wheelers, the Whitneys, the Seabrooks, the Coleys and the Palmers.

Research: research/mcmillan/Fairchild_Raymond_Woodworth.md.

Open questions

• Is he the Jonathan born at Norwalk in 1744? The Bridgewater stone’s exact inscription (Find a Grave memorial 19838480, with a photograph) and the 1815 Greene County probate (bond 28 Feb, inventory 20 Apr, letters to Henry; any petition naming widow and heirs) would settle or sink it, and would prove Richard and John his sons. The Revolutionary pension files of the Norwalk Jonathan’s brothers John (S10641) and Stephen (W1403) may mention him.
• Where he is buried: the “J. F.” fieldstone at East Jewett, or Bridgewater.
• His second wife’s surname, and the 1993 research by Delite Gaddie for Bryson Caldwell Cook.