Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (22 October 1693 – 9 December 1781) was a Scottish peer and landowner in the Colony of Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia is named in his honor.
Biography[]
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron was born at Leeds Castle in Kent, England in 1693, the son of Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. Educated at Oxford from 1710 to 1713, he served in the Horse Guards before inheriting his maternal Culpeper family's estates on the Northern Neck of Virginia. He relied on the rent of his 5.2 million-acre landholdings in northern Virginia to finance his expensive lifestyle, and he arranged for his cousin William Fairfax to serve as his land agent in the Americas. He visited Virginia from 1735 to 1737 before moving there in 1747, meeting his nephew George William Fairfax's best friend George Washington in 1748. He became the only resident peer in the Thirteen Colonies, and he moved to the Shenandoah Valley in 1752, settling near White Post in Clarke County. He was a devout Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, and the title to his domain was confiscated by the Patriots in 1779. He died in 1781.