scendant of Thomas, the first Lord Fairfax, who was an 

 elder brother of Edward, an episode in whose life is the 

 subject of the paper under consideration. William Fair- 

 fax was the son of Hon. Henry Fairfax, sheriff of York- 

 shire, who was the son of Henry, the fourth Lord Fairfax. 

 Having received the appointment of collector of the port 

 of Salem, he came to Salem in 1725 from the Bahamas, 

 where he had married Sarah, daughter of Major Walker, 

 and was appointed Chief Justice of the Island. His wife 

 died in Salem in 1731, and subsequently he married 

 Deborah, daughter of Francis and Deborah (Gedney) 

 Clarke. In 1734 he accepted an offer from his cousin 

 Thomas, the sixth Lord Fairfax, to be the superintendent 

 of the estates in Virginia, which he had inherited from 

 his mother, who was a daughter of Lord Culpepper. He 

 then removed thither and took up his residence first in 

 Westmoreland County, but subsequently removed to a 

 plantation called Belvoir, near Alexandria. 



During his residence in Salem he occupied the house 

 which was taken down some eight years since, on the 

 western corner of Essex and Cambridge streets, for the 

 erection on the site of a more eligible mansion. The 

 house was then owned by Philip English, or his daughter 

 Susannah Touzel. 



For a more extended notice of the Clarke Family and 

 its connection with the Fairfax, the reader is referred to 

 a notice of the Clarke and Gedney families, prepared by 

 H. F. Waters, and printed in the Historical Collections 

 of the Essex Institute, Vol. XVI, part 4. 



Mr. CoLLYER gave at first a very graphic account of 

 the ancient seat of the Fairfax family at Denton Park 

 in Yorkshire. He spoke of several of the members of 

 the family, particularly Thomas, the third Lord Fairfax, 



