Hezekiah, son of Gershom and Lydia Fairchild, had five brothers, Benjamin, Nathaniel, Aaron, Joseph, and Caleb and four sisters, Theodocia, Sarah, Ann and Clowe. He was born in 1760 and grew up during the Revolutionary War and founding of the United States period.
Revolutionary War Service
Hezekiah served as a private in the New Jersey contingent during the Revolutionary War. (Official Registry of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War, edited by William S. Stryker, Trenton, NJ. 1872, p. 878). There are no particular details that indicate which New Jersey battalion in which he served, but it is likely that he was a member of the initial First or Second Battalions (he married in 1780 so he was not serving at that time – the Third and Fourth Battalions were still in active service in 1780). On November 10, 1775, six companies of the First and Second Battalions were ordered to man the Highlands Fort on the Hudson River. On November 27th, the rest of the two battalions were ordered into barracks near New York. On December 8th, both battalions were ordered into the city of New York.
On January 10th, 1776, three companies were ordered to report to Colonel Nathaniel Heard (First Battalion Middlesex Militia) for duty in arresting Tories and disaffected persons in Queens County, New York. The rest of the battalion was stationed at Perth Amboy and Elizabethtown, New Jersey, until May, 1776. On May 3, with the Third Battalion, they left New York to join an expedition to Canada, and, having been joined by the Second Battalion, took an active part in Quebec operations. Subsequently, the First and Second Battalions were ordered into barracks at Ticonderoga, and remained at that station until directed by General Sullivan, November 5th, 1776, to return to New Jersey for discharge.
Alternatively, Hezekiah could have been part of four companies later organized and stationed at Staten Island, New York and Amboy, New Jersey. The two groups were joined at Elizabethtown, April 28th, 1776 and left that place for New York on the next day. On May 2nd the battalion was reviewed and then sailed in sloops for Albany. Colonel Dayton reported there to Brigadier General John Sullivan, of New Hampshire. During the remainder of the year, they were stationed at Johnstown, German Flats, Fort Dayton, Fort Schuyler, Ticonderoga, and Mount Independence. They were chiefly engaged in preventing Indian incursions. The battalion left Albany March 7th, 1777, and was discharged at Morristown, New Jersey, on March 23rd.
Moving to Virginia and Getting Married
It is not clear whether Hezekiah relocated to Virginia because of his war service or for some other reason. It has already been shown that a number of Fairchilds visited and migrated from Morristown, New Jersey southward along the Appalachian mountain range. It is possible that he had uncles and/or cousins who preceded him in relocating there.
He met and married Jimima (Gemenia) Bell who was born in Russell County, Virginia and they married in 1780. Washington County, Virginia was one of the first localities to be named after George Washington after the Revolutionary War. Washington County is located in the far southeastern area of Virginia, just above the North Carolina border. As with many other frontier counties, the boundaries and territory changed over the years. In 1786 the northwestern part of Washington County became Russell County, which is the listed birth location for Jemima Fairchild.
Hezekiah and Jemima had seven children, all born in Washington County, Virginia. All three sons however migrated southward to Johnson County, Kentucky and lived there until their deaths. More about this migration when we discuss the next generation.
Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794)
Given that Hezekiah married Jemima Bell in 1780, it is likely that the young couple experienced firsthand the Indian Wars that occurred in and around southwestern Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. Virginia was raided by Indians during the Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794), a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles which were a continuation of the Cherokee struggle during and after the American Revolutionary War against American frontiersmen encroachment.
In July 1776, Chief Dragging Canoe led an attack on Black’s Fort in Washington County, Virginia on the Holston River. The Indians killed the settler Henry Creswell on July 22, 1776, outside the stockade. More attacks continued the third week of July. Black’s Fort was capable of sheltering up to 600 settlers and had become the county seat of the newly formed County in 1776 (it was renamed to Abingdon after Martha Washington’s English manor in 1778).
In 1780 after returning from Revolutionary War fighting, soldiers learned that the Cherokee had used the men’s absence to plunder numerous homesteads. Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition of seven hundred Virginians and North Carolinians against the Cherokee in December 1780, under the command of Sevier, defeating the Cherokee at the battle of Boyd’s Creek, Tennessee. On Christmas Day 1780, the soldiers rode through Cherokee villages on the Little Tennessee River burning homes and destroying crops.
The area remained prone to attack until after Chickamauga leader Bob Benge was finally slain by settlers in Washington County in 1794. Since Dragging Canoe was the dominant leader in both phases of the conflict, the period is sometimes called “Dragging Canoe’s War.”
American Generation #5
Hezekiah Fairchild, Wife and Children
| Hezekiah Fairchild | b: 1760, Morristown, New Jersey d: 1817, Washington County, Virginia |
| Jemima (Gemenia) “Jeminie” (Bell) Fairchild (Married in 1780) | b: 1760, Russell County, Virginia d: 1816, Washington County, Virginia |
Children
| Aaron Sinclair Fairchild (Married Rebecca McSpadden in 1812) | b: 1789, Washington County, Virginia d: April 16, 1871, Johnson County, KY |
| Benjamin Fairchild (Married Barbara Ellen Litz in 1817) (Married Minerva Jane Blevins in 1848) | b: 1792, Washington, County, Virginia d: 1860, Johnson County, Kentucky |
| Nancy Fairchild (Married James Watson, 1819) | b: 1794, Washington County, Virginia |
| Fannie L. Fairchild (Married Stephen Litz, 1818) | b: Jan 22, 1796, Washington County, VA |
| Joseph Fairchild (Married Katherine Lark bef. 1830) | b: 1810, Washington County, Virginia d: Dec 18, 1859, Johnson County, KY |
| John Fairchild | b: 1810, Washington County, Virginia |
| Eleanor Fairchild | b: 1815, Washington, County, Virginia d: 1830, Washington County, Virginia |
MATERNAL ANCESTRY: Jemima Bell Fairchild
Culturally, we tend to think of the name Jemima as a slave-era name (Aunt Jemima’s Pancakes, etc.). However in the late 1700s it was a common female name. Daniel Boone’s daughter was named Jemima. When the Cherokee began raiding into Kentucky, a war party led captured three teenage girls in a canoe on the Kentucky River. The girls were Jemima Boone, daughter of Daniel Boone; and Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, daughters of Richard Callaway. The war party hurried toward the Shawnee towns north of the Ohio River, but was overtaken by Boone and his rescue party after three days. After a brief firefight, the war party retreated and the girls were rescued. They were unharmed and Jemima Boone stated that they had been treated reasonably well.
