Senator John Fairfield Dies

The Senate, throughout its history, has customarily found itself in session during the winter holiday season, a time when members would rather be with their loved ones. On December 24, 1847, freshman Maine Senator John Fairfield, a man of exceptional promise, died suddenly. His unexpected death as a consequence of a minor operation was apparently due to the bungling or quackery of the surgeon.

Back in Maine, his family, to whom he was devoted, was unaware of this sad turn of events. On Christmas Eve, his wife and children eagerly awaited his arrival. Among the senator’s chief legacies to us today are the warm, almost daily letters he sent home to his family from the time he first arrived in Washington as a representative in 1835. These letters, in their published form, contribute greatly to our knowledge of Washington life in the 1830s and 1840s. From them we learn that Fairfield experienced particular frustration at being separated from his family throughout the legislative year. After his struggles to find a reasonably priced boardinghouse in the capital, he wrote his wife, "I had no idea before being put to the trial how hard it would be for me to quit you and ours." He had barely arrived in Washington as a new member when news reached him of the early birth of his third son, and he wrote his wife of his sorrow at not being by her side.

Fairfield was born in Maine in 1797. After attending Bowdoin College, he embarked on a promising legal career. Twice elected to the House, he resigned in 1838 to become governor of Maine. He resigned that position in 1843 to become a senator. At the time of his death, the Maine senator was being watched closely by the senior members of his party as a potential leader. Fairfield had written movingly of his colleagues who died in office, and he attended each funeral. Now it was his colleagues’ turn to inform Mrs. Fairfield of her husband’s untimely death in office at the age of fifty.