James Harris Fairchild (1817–1902) was an American educator.
Harris was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on November 25, 1817. His father was Grandison Fairchild. Soon after his birth his parents moved to Brownhelm, Lorain County, Ohio, and settled on a farm about ten miles from the present site of Oberlin College. When Oberlin opened its doors in 1834, Fairchild entered as a freshman. He graduated in 1838. The year after graduation he was appointed tutor in the college, was ordained in 1841, and in 1842 became professor of Latin and Greek. In 1847, he was transferred to the chair of mathematics, and in 1858 to that of theology and moral philosophy. In 1866, he became the third president of the college. During his tenure, the faculty and physical plant of the college expanded dramatically. In 1889, he resigned as president but remained as chair of systematic theology.
His wife, Mary Fletcher Kellogg, was one of the first group of five women to be admitted to a college in the United States. She was the only one who didn't graduate, as her father's business failed. Her family moved to a frontier area of Louisiana, and Fairchild, who'd known her while they were students at Oberlin, came down and married her in November 1841.[1]
Fairchild wrote a history of Oberlin entitled Oberlin: The colony and the College, 1833-1883 which was published in 1883. He also wrote works on phylosphy including Moral Phylosphy; or, the science of Obligation, and Elements of theology, natural and revealed.
The biography of Fairchild James Harris Fairchild or Sixty-Eight Years with a Christian College was written by Albert Temple Swing and published in 1907.[2]