Financier secretary of the treasury
Charles Stebbins Fairchild was born in Cazenovia, Madison County, New York. His parents, Sidney Thompson and Helen (Childs) Fairchild, had come to Cazenovia from Stratford, Conn. , and were both descended from English families that had been domiciled in New England since about 1660.
Charles was educated at a local seminary, and at Harvard College, graduating from the latter in 1863.
Two years later he graduated from the Harvard Law School and entered the Albany firm of his father, where much of the local business of the New York Central Railroad was transacted.
Lincklaen had founded Cazenovia on one of the purchases of that company about 1793. When Samuel J. Tilden took office as governor of New York in 1875 he found Fairchild acting as a deputy attorney-general, and accredited with conscience and ability shown in securing the conviction of the New York police commissioners Charlick and Gardner. Under Governor Tilden’s direction, Fairchild conducted the prosecutions in the canal ring frauds, and he was pushed by the Governor into the nomination for attorney-general at the Syracuse convention of the Democratic party in 1875 (New York Herald, Sept. 17, 1875). He was elected in November; but two years later Tilden was no longer governor, the canal ring was in a position of influence, and Tammany was in complete control (New York Herald, Oct. 4, 1877). Fairchild failed to get a renomination, retired in due time to private life, and returned to his practise of law. President Cleveland in 1885 selected Daniel Manning as secretary of the treasury, and Fairchild as assistant secretary; and when midway in the term Manning’s health forced him to retire, Fairchild became secretary on April1, 1887. He remained in this post until the end of the administration, struggling to put the treasury surplus to use, and to maintain the standard of the currency. Out of office in 1889, he became a banker in New York City, and a philanthropist, with a large influence in the affairs of the Charity Organization Society. He emerged from private life in 1892 to fight Hill’s “snap” convention (DeAlva Stanwood Alexander, Four Famous New Yorkers, 1923, p. 167); and in 1896 to oppose the Bryan ticket. He was permanent chairman of the Syracuse convention that chose a gold Democratic delegation to go to Indianapolis (Rochester Herald, Sept. 1, 1896), and a member of the monetary commission. In his old age he appeared at loyalty meetings; and he sought in 1920 to induce the Supreme Court to intervene to prevent the operation of the woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution. He and his wife, who survived him, continued association wtih “Lorenzo, ” the old home at Cazenovia, and here he died.
Thompson Fairchild, father of Charles, was an aggressive Democrat and his son inherited his point of view. “My first speech, ” the latter once declared, “was a eulogy upon that great Democrat, William L. Marcy. My teachings in Democracy were from the earliest childhood at the knee of Seymour, and later at the side of Tilden. The warmest friendship of my manhood was with Manning” (Cooper Union speech, in opposition to David B. Hill, New York Tribune, Feb. 12, 1892).
Quotations: “My first speech, ” he once declared, “was a eulogy upon that great Democrat, William L. Marcy. My teachings in Democracy were from the earliest childhood at the knee of Seymour, and later at the side of Tilden. The warmest friendship of my manhood was with Manning” (Cooper Union speech, in opposition to David B. Hill, New York Tribune, Feb. 12, 1892).
Charity Organization Society
He was permanent chairman of the Syracuse convention that chose a gold Democratic delegation to go to Indianapolis (Rochester Herald, Sept. 1, 1896), and a member of the monetary commission.
He was married in 1871 to Helen Lincklaen, a distant relative and childhood friend, who was a relative of that Lincklaen who was an associate of Theophilus Cazenove, agent for the Holland Land Company.
