Эдмунд Бёрк Фэрфилд: Американский политик и общественный деятель

American politician

Edmund Burke Fairfield (August 7, 1821 – November 7, 1904) was an American minister, educator and politician from the U. S. state of Michigan. He served as the 12th lieutenant governor of Michigan and as the second Chancellor of the University of Nebraska.

Fairfield was born in Parkersburg, Virginia, now West Virginia. He moved with his family to Troy, Ohio, when he was a young boy. He received an early education at Denison University of Granville and in 1837 he attended Marietta College of Marietta. He graduated from the congregationalist affiliated Oberlin College of Oberlin in 1842. He then worked as a tutor at the college teaching Latin and Greek. He spent two years as a Christian minister in New Hampshire, and two in Boston as pastor of the Ruggles Street Baptist Church. Then, in 1848, he became President of the Michigan Central College, renamed Hillsdale College in 1853, and remained in this office until his resignation in 1869. In 1857, Fairfield received LL. D. degree from Madison University (now Colgate University) in New York.

In the theological field, Fairfield, having been a Baptist early in his career and Congregationalist pastor later in life, became convinced that the doctrines of Baptists were without sufficient foundation for him to remain a minister in any Baptist denomination. He delineated his views in his Letters on Baptism (1893). He died on November 7, 1904, in Oberlin, Ohio, at the age of eighty three in Oberlin, eleven years after its publication.

Fairfield was the son of Micajah Fairfield and Hannah (Wynn) Fairfield. He was married three times. He married his first wife, Lucia Ann Jennison, daughter of Dr. Charles Jennison and Betsy Mahan, on August 27, 1845. They had three children together. He married his second wife Mary A. Baldwin on August 22, 1859, and had seven children together. He married his third wife Mary Allen Tibbitts on June 16, 1883; they had no children together. Fairfield was descended from a Frenchman by the name of Beauchamp, at some point the name was anglicised to Fairfield.