Thomas Fairfax, sixth Baron Fairfax of Cameron, a British nobleman, born about 1690, died at Green way Court, near Winchester, Va., in 1782. He was educated at Oxford, enjoyed a reputation as a wit and man of letters, and contributed some papers to the "Spectator." He visited Virginia in 1739 to look after the large estates he had inherited from his mother, the daughter of Lord Cul-peper, governor of the province between 1680 and 1683. They comprised upward of 5,700,000 acres lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, on both sides of the Blue Ridge, including a great portion of the Shenandoah valley. He resided afterward at Belvoir, near Mount Vernon, on the Potomac. In 1748 he made the acquaintance of George Washington, then a youth of 16, and, impressed with his energy and talents, employed him to survey his lands lying west of the Blue Ridge. This was the commencement of an intimacy between Fairfax and Washington, which survived all differences of opinion on political subjects, and terminated only with the death of the former. So favorable was the report of Washington, that his employer soon after took up his residence at Greenway Court, in the midst of a manor of 10,000 acres, about 12 miles from Winchester, where during the remainder of his life he lived in a state of baronial hospitality.

During the panic on the Virginian frontier after the defeat of Braddock, Fairfax organized a troop of horse, and, as lord lieutenant of Frederick county, called out the local militia. During the revolutionary war he adhered to the royal cause. The surrender at Yorktown deeply wounded his national pride, and, according to tradition, was the immediate cause of his death, which happened soon after. The generosity of Lord Fairfax is exemplified in the surrender of his large estates in England to his brother, and in his frequent gifts of lands to his poor neighbors in Virginia.-The title is still vested in his descendants, the present and 11th baron (1874) being John Coutee Fairfax, M. D., of Bladens-burg, Md.