Doctor Orlando Fairfax succeeded his father as owner from 1848 to 1864. He bore the title of the "Beloved Physician." The following advertisements, taken from the files of the Alexandria Gazette, give a brief glimpse of his activities in the 1830s:
Dr. Fairfax has returned to Alexandria, and is ready to resume the practice of his profession in the town and its neighborhood. His office is at the N.W. corner of Pitt and Cameron Streets.
Dr. Fairfax in his late absence of five months, has been constantly engaged at Philadelphia in increasing his medical acquirements. [1831]
Dr. Fairfax has returned to Alexandria and is ready to resume the practice of his profession. He has, during his late absence from Alexandria, witnessed many cases of the epidemic cholera. [1832]
In 1829 Dr. Fairfax had married Mary Randolph Cary, daughter of Wilson Jefferson Cary. They had nine children.
Arch and staircase in the Yeaton-Fairfax House
In a deed of April 14, 1864, the fact is revealed that this property was condemned according to an act of Congress in 1862 "to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion to seize and confiscate property of Rebels and for other purposes."[184] It further records that on the preceding day, April 13, 1864, Gouverneur Morris, attorney for Patsy J. Morris, of Westchester County, New York, purchased for four thousand dollars, he being the highest bidder therefor, all the right, title, interest and estate of Dr. Orlando Fairfax.
Gouverneur Morris was a brother-in-law of Dr. Orlando Fairfax, and while living in France sent the Fairfaxes from the palace at Versailles a very large and elegant mirror which hung in the drawing room, filling one of the alcoves from floor to ceiling. This mirror is still in existence and in the possession of Dr. Fairfax's granddaughter, Mrs. Donald MacCrea.
Mrs. Burton Harrison in her Recollections, Grave and Gay, relates the wartime experiences of her uncle and his family who were forced to seek refuge in Richmond, of their sufferings and privations, and of the death of the young son of the family, Randolph, barely twenty, killed in action in mid-December 1862.