Edmund Burke Fairfield (August 7, 1821 – November 7, 1904) was a minister, educator and politician from the U. S. State of Michigan and an educator from Nebraska.
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Fairfield was descended from a Frenchman by the name of Beauchamp, at some point the name was anglicised to Fairfield. He was born in Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) and his family to Troy, Ohio when he was a young boy. He received an early education at Denison University of Granville and in 1837 at Marietta College of Marietta and graduated from Oberlin College of Oberlin in 1842 where he had become a tutor.
He spent two years as a Christian minister in New Hampshire, and two in Boston as pastor of the Ruggles Street Baptist Church. He married his first wife, Lucia Ann Jennison, daughter of Dr. Charles Jennison and Betsy Mahan, on August 27, 1845 and had three children together. Then, in 1848, he became President of the Michigan Central College, renamed Hillsdale College in 1853, and remained in this office until 1869. In 1857, Fairfield received LL.D. degree from Madison University (now Colgate University) in New York.
Fairfield served as a Republican in the Michigan Senate (14th district) from 1857 to 1858. He was elected to serve as the 12th Lieutenant Governor of Michigan from 1859 to 1861, and made a widely published speech on the "Prohibition of Slavery in the Territories". He married his second wife Mary A. Baldwin on August 22, 1859 and had seven children together.
In 1863, Fairfield received a D.D. degree from the Indiana University. The following year he received an S.T.D. degree from Denison University of Ohio. He received a number of honors in the academic world, before, in 1876, being elected Chancellor of the University of Nebraska.
He married his third wife Mary Allen Tibbitts on June 16, 1883 and had no children with her. In the theological field, Fairfield, having been a Baptist pastor, became convinced that the doctrines of Baptists were without sufficient foundation for him to remain a minister in any Baptist denomination. He delineated his views in his Letters on Baptism (1893). He died eleven years after its publication at the age of eighty-three in Oberlin.
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| Preceded by George Coe |
Lieutenant Governor of Michigan 1859–1861 |
Succeeded by James M. Birney |