FAIRFIELD, a city and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 51 m. W. by N. of Burlington. Pop. (1890) 3391; (1900) 4689, of whom 206 were foreign-born and 54 were negroes; (1905) 5009; (1910) 4970. Area, about 2.25 sq. m. Fairfield is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways. The city is in a blue grass country, in which much live stock is bred; and it is an important market for draft horses. It is the seat of Parsons College (Presbyterian, coeducational, 1875), endowed by Lewis Baldwin Parsons, Sr. (1798-1855), a merchant of Buffalo, N.Y. The college offers classical, philosophical and scientific courses, and has a school of music and an academic department; in 1907-1908 it had 19 instructors and 257 students, of whom 93 were in the college and 97 were in the school of music. Fairfield has a Carnegie library (1892), and a museum with a collection of laces. Immediately E. of the city is an attractive Chautauqua Park, of 30 acres, with an auditorium capable of seating about 4000 persons; and there is an annual Chautauqua assembly. The principal manufactures of Fairfield are farm waggons, farming implements, drain-tile, malleable iron, cotton gloves and mittens and cotton garments. The municipality owns its waterworks and an electric-lighting plant. Fairfield was settled in 1839; was incorporated as a town in 1847; and was first chartered as a city in the same year.
See Charles H. Fletcher, Jefferson County, Iowa: Centennial History (Fairfield, 1876).
FAIRHAVEN, a township in Bristol county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on New Bedford Harbor, opposite New Bedford. Pop. (1890) 2919; (1900) 3567 (599 being foreign-born); (1905, state census) 4235; (1910) 5122. Area, about 13 sq. m. Fairhaven is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway and by electric railway to Mattapoisett and Marion, and is connected with New Bedford by two bridges, by electric railway, and by the New York, New Haven & Hartford ferry line. The principal village is Fairhaven; others are Oxford, Naskatucket and Sconticut Neck. As a summer resort Fairhaven is widely known. Among the principal buildings are the following, presented to the township by Henry H. Rogers (1840-1909), a native of Fairhaven and a large stockholder and long vice-president of the Standard Oil Co.; the town hall, a memorial of Mrs Rogers, the Rogers public schools; the Millicent public library (17,500 vols. in 1908), a memorial to his daughter; and a fine granite memorial church (Unitarian) with parish house, a memorial to his mother; and there is also a public park, of 13 acres, the gift of Mr Rogers. From 1830 to 1857 the inhabitants of Fairhaven were chiefly engaged in whaling, and the fishing interests are still important. Among manufactures are tacks, nails, iron goods, loom-cranks, glass, yachts and boats, and shoes.
Fairhaven, originally a part of New Bedford, was incorporated as a separate township in 1812. On the 5th of September 1778 a fleet and armed force under Earl Grey, sent to punish New Bedford and what is now Fairhaven for their activity in privateering, burned the shipping and destroyed much of New Bedford. The troops then marched to the head of the Acushnet river, and down the east bank to Sconticut Neck, where they camped till the 7th of September, when they re-embarked, having meanwhile dismantled a small fort, built during the early days of the war, on the east side of the river at the entrance to the harbour. On the evening of the 8th of September a landing force from the fleet, which had begun to set fire to Fairhaven, was driven off by a body of about 150 minute-men commanded by Major Israel Fearing; and on the following day the fleet departed. The fort was at once rebuilt and was named Fort Fearing, but as early as 1784 it had become known as Fort Phoenix; it was one of the strongest defences on the New England coast during the war of 1812. The township of Acushnet was formed from the northern part of Fairhaven in 1860.
See James L. Gillingham and others, A Brief History of the Town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts (Fairhaven, 1903).
FAIRHOLT, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814-1866), English antiquary and wood engraver, was born in London in 1814. His father, who was of a German family (the name was originally Fahrholz), was a tobacco manufacturer, and for some years Fairholt himself was employed in the business. For a time he was a drawing-master, afterwards a scene-painter, and in 1835 he became assistant to S. Sly, the wood engraver. Some pen and ink copies made by him of figures from Hogarth’s plates led to his being employed by Charles Knight on several of his illustrated publications. His first published literary work was a contribution to Hone’s Year-Book in 1831. His life was one of almost uninterrupted quiet labour, carried on until within a few days of death. Several works on civic pageantry and some collections of ancient unpublished songs and dialogues were edited by him for the Percy Society in 1842. In 1844 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He published an edition of the dramatic works of Lyly in 1856. His principal independent works are Tobacco, its History, and Association (1859); Gog and Magog (1860); Up the Nile and Home Again (1862); many articles and serials contributed to the Art Journal, some of which were afterwards separately published, as Costume in England (1846); Dictionary of Terms in Art (1854). These works are illustrated by numerous cuts, drawn on the wood by his own hand. His pencil was also employed in illustrating Evans’s Coins of the Ancient Britons, Madden’s Jewish Coinage, Halliwell’s folio Shakespeare and his Sir John Maundeville, Roach Smith’s Richborough, the Miscellanea Graphica of Lord Londesborough, and many other works. He died on the 3rd of April 1866. His books relating to Shakespeare were bequeathed to the library at Stratford-on-Avon; those on civic pageantry (between 200 and 300 volumes) to the Society of Antiquaries; his old prints and works on costume to the British Museum; his general library he desired to be sold and the proceeds devoted to the Literary Fund.