United States of America

There are many family members spread across the States.

One family that moved to Utah in the late 1800s is part of the English Burton Joyce Branch.  This is headed by John Thomas Fairholm and Almira Eveline Williams.

We have made contact with several Americans who have connections with Fairholm family members, and they have been most helpful. This has resulted in four cross Atlantic connections with the Scottish Firth of Forth Branch and one with the Scottish Edinburgh Branch.  I have include some details in an item lower down the page.

We have also been given data by other researchers and have found census and other data about family members in Iowa, Kansas and Indiana which seem to link back to New Jersey in the late 1700s - there seems to have been family members in that state from at least 1793 to at least 1850. At the moment, I am not certain how these families fit together and how they link to the British Isles so I have created several temporary branches. Trees for the early years of each New Jersey branch are included below.

New Jersey branches

© base map Corel Corporation

New Jersey 1

This branch is headed by Jeremiah Haines Fairholm. He was born 1815 in New Jersey and married Gulielmo Rudderows in 1840.  There are several different spellings of Gulielmo's name. The family is associated with Kosciusko in Kansas, and with Dexter, Douglas, Massena, Penn, Washington and Winterset in Iowa and Hennepin County, Minnesota. There are 315 people on this tree, including living descendants.

New Jersey 2 / 3 (two merged branches)

This branch is headed by Isaac Vail Fairholm born 1801 New Jersey. He married Mary Kindle in 1822. The family is associated with Waynesville, Ohio and Oskaloosa, Kansas. There are 79 people on this tree. They include living descendants, but none of them are Fairholms - yet.

New Jersey 4

This branch is headed by John Fairholm and Ann West, who married in 1816. They were both born in New Jersey around 1794 and were still living in the state in Burlington County in 1850. We only have one daughter for this couple, Mary I., plus her two children, John and Joseph Haines. Mary married a second time, to a Richard Jobes.

Links

The best guess at the moment is that all the New Jersey branches are descended from Johnston Fairholm who, according to family history, arrived in, what would become, the USA prior to the War of Independence. He had two sons and a daughter, but we only have a name for one of them - William. It is likely that William is also the man who married Margaret Vail (New Jersey 1 branch) given that he had a son named Isaac Vail Fairholm. In a history of the Vail family, William and Margaret are stated as having had 11 children, but only one is named in that source, Johnston - it would seem, a grandson of the previously mentioned Johnston. John who heads New Jersey 4 branch is possibly one of William's other sons. There is still a lot to sort out, in particular the names of all the children of William and Margaret. (Note : Jeremiah Haines Fairholm also had a son called Isaac Vail Fairholm born 1850 - there is a photograph of him and his family later on the page.)

Going further back, Johnston Fairholm senior may have been the merchant who arrived at New Jersey via New York and Jamaica.  In this case, he is likely to be from the Scottish Edinburghshire & Borders Branch.  Johnston is a rare name in the families and only occurs once and in that branch.  Other members of that branch undertook business in the West Indies and in Europe.  Johnston may have died back in the UK at Bath in 1796.

At least three family members of the New Jersey branches were blacksmiths.

There are still many other family members that we have not yet been able to connect to any of the trees.

Click on an images to open a pdf of the early branches of the trees.  It will open in a separate window in your web browser.

New Jersey 1

New Jersey 2/3

New Jersey 4

Click on the image to open a pdf showing how the branches MAY fit together. It will open in a separate window in your web browser.

Links

Isaac Vail Fairholm (1850) - & Family

Isaac Vail Fairholm was the son of Jeremiah Haines Fairholm (New Jersey 1 branch). His father died when Isaac was only five. His mother was not able to look after all her seven children on her own and so for a time placed most of them with other families in the area. The photograph shows him, later in life, with his wife and six children. By the look of the youngest son, the photograph was taken after 1890 and before 1900. Many of the Iowa Fairholms are descended from Isaac.

Back row : Arthur L. / Frank Leon

Middle row : Lottie Oris / Mabel Isis / Dora Iris

Front row : Sarah Jane (nee Woolery) / Harry Rudrow / Isaac Vail.

This photograph was shared by Janiece Ochoa

Leon Arthur & Harry Dale Fairholm

Here are two of the sons of Harry Rudrow Fairholm and Margurite Joy. (They are grandsons of Isaac Vail Fairholm (1850) of the New Jersey 1 branch). The photograph was taken sometime in the 1940s.

This photograph was shared by Noel Fairholm

William Fairholm - assault

William Fairholm lived in the small town of Vincentown in New Jersey.  A one point he was the keeper of the 'upper' tavern and a blacksmith.  Probably, he is the William Fairholm who is the head of the New Jersey 1 branch.

In 1810 a writ was issued by Andrew Kirkpatrick, Chief Justice for the state of New Jersey, to instruct the sheriff for the County of Burlington to arrest William Fairholm so that he could be brought before the Supreme Court of New Jersey on the first Tuesday of September at Trenton (the state capital).

William was required to:

“answer John Youle Junior of a Plea of Trespass; and also to a Bill of the said John to be exhibited according to the custom afore Court against the said William Fairholm for assaulting, beating, falsely imprisoning the said John Youle”

It seems that John Youle Junior was seeking damages of $5,000.  This would be in the order of $100,000 today.

Unfortunately, this is the only paperwork that remains so we have no idea of the circumstances that led to the case or what happened when the court considered it, but the allegations certainly seem serious.   However, there is a record of another case, this time in 1812, brought by William against John Youle Junior.   This case is about costs of $18.60 (and interest on them).   The original document is very faded, but there is reference to “the false claims of the said John”.  It possible that William was found innocent of the claims made in the previous case and had sought costs that had not been paid.

Photograph from Unsplash, but credit lost & no longer on site

Quakers

The Church of England was the main religion of England following the creation of the church in the 1500s, but some members of the English branches joined or were born into other Christian religions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Quakerism emerged in the mid-1600s after the English Civil War as one of several new religious movements.  The Society of Friends, as it is more properly known, spread from the north of England across the rest of the country, with congregations already established in North America and the Caribbean by the later 1600s.

In the mid 1670s the district of Salem and the town of Burlington in the province of West Jersey were settled by Quakers. West Jersey having been acquired by Quakers John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge, with the assistance of William Penn, who went on to found the adjoining province of Pennsylvania a few years later.  The colony of West Jersey merged with East Jersey in 1687 and the resulting province of New Jersey became a colony in 1702.  Quakers were prominent in the governance and general life of the province from its founding, but there was a greater Quaker presence in the former west province than in the east one.

The Fairholm family was located in the Burlington area in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It is close to the Delaware River, which forms the border with Pennsylvania at this point.  The river was the route by which ships brought settlers to the area.  However, if my assumption noted in an earlier item is correct then the Fairholm family moved to New Jersey from New York rather than direct from Scotland.  William Fairholm married Margaret Vail sometime in the early to mid 1790s. The Vail family were Quakers at the time.  However, Issac Vail, Margaret's father, did not marry in accordance with his church's practices and had to acknowledge his transgression at the local monthly meeting of the church in October 1762.    One website claims that his wife, Rachel, was a Presbyterian, which might explain the occurence, but provides no evidence for this.  

Information from britannica.com, quakersintheworld.org, The Vail Family compiled by Beverly Yount.

Scottish emmigrations

The Scottish family from the Edinburgh branch that moved from the UK to the USA was headed by Joseph Fairholm & Margaret Smith   The family settled in California by 1887, but died out in the male line in the mid 1900s.

The Scottish families from the Firth of Forth branch that settled in the USA were headed by:

- Alexander Fairholm / Firm & Janet Hynd - he had arrived by 1856

- Andrew Farms & Nora Canter - he had arrived by 1896

- Robert Erskine Farms & Phoebe Penman - he had arrived by 1923

- Thomas Reid Fairholm & Doris Fern Taylor - he had arrived by 1942.

William Rudrow Fairholm - civil war & illness

William Rudrow Fairholm of the New Jersey 1 branch enlisted as a private in the 48th Regiment of Indiana Infantry on 5 September 1862 for a period of three years.  This was during the American Civil War, a war that lasted from 1861 to 1865.  He was eighteen years and ten months old.  It was necessary for his parents to give their consent because he was classified as a minor.  

The standard form used to register his examination as being suitable to enlist exists and it has some interesting questions about his physical health, including:

Have you ever received an injury or wound upon the head?

Are you in the habit of drinking?  Or have you ever had the horrors?

Are you subject to the piles?

William answered ‘no’ to these and the other questions, apart from the one about vaccination against small pox.

He served at the regimental headquarters and later was the orderly for Adjutant Stanfield.  

During William’s service his regiment participated in the battle of Iuka (September 1862), the second battle of Corinth (October 1862), and engagements at Forty Hills, Raymond, Jackson and Champion's Hill. It took part in the assault of Vicksburg on 22 May 1862.  It is not clear what role William had in any of these battles.

William was discharged in August 1863 at Vicksburg, Mississippi on the grounds of “disability”.  The disability was chronic diarrhoea “of which he has suffered much” according to his certificate of discharge.  Diseases of this sort were very common amongst both armies in the war due to the conditions in which the soldiers lived and the limited medical awareness of the causes of many diseases.  

According to an article on PubMed Central of the National Library of Medicine “The most common sickness among the soldiers was gastrointestinal disorders. There were 711 cases per 1000 soldiers per year… The mortality rate of acute diarrhea and dysentery was 3 to 17 per 1000 per year, while that of chronic diarrhea and dysentery was 126 to 162 per 1000 per year…”

It is not known if William received any treatment for his condition, but mercurous chloride was used to alleviate diarrhoea. Mercury used in this way could have serious side effects, including the loss of teeth and gangrene.

Despite serving for only a short time during the civil war William was approved for a pension.

The information for this item is from William’s military records, civilwarindex.com and PubMed Central - which includes data from Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (GW Adams) and Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs (AJ Bollet).