Donald MacNeil Fairfax was born in Virginia, the son of George William and Isabella (McNeill) Fairfax. His great-grandfather, the Rev. Bryan Fairfax, though he never assumed the title, was by regular inheritance the eighth baron of Cameron.
Donald McNeill was appointed a midshipman from North Carolina in 1837 and promoted to passed midshipman in 1843. Soon afterward he was on the Missouri when it was destroyed by fire in Gibraltar harbor, and on the Princeton when at Washington in 1844 one of its guns burst and killed several notables. He took part in the capture of Lower California during the Mexican War, and in February 1851 was made lieutenant. In November as executive officer of the San Jacinto, under Capt. Charles Wilkes, he had personal charge of the capture of the Confederate agents, Mason and Slidell, from the English vessel Trent, Doubtful of the expediency of this seizure, he executed it—by design—with such artful tact as to prevent the captain of the Trent from turning the entire vessel over to him as a prize. During he commanded the Cayuga under Farragut at New Orleans, and during 1863, the Nantucket and the Montauk ofif Charleston. Fie was commandant of midshipmen at Annapolis 1864-65, and he had charge of the Susquehanna when it was attacked by a disastrous yellow-fever epidemic in 1867. Promoted to commodore in 1873, he was for five years thereafter commandant of the naval station at New London, and for the two years following governor of the Naval Asylum. He was made a rear-admiral in 1880, and was retired in 1881.
He was married to Josephine, daughter of rear-admiral Andrew Hull Foote.
