Made to Last Forever: A Family. A House. A Nation. The Story Behind the Fairbanks Book

First a Holiday special for you
Only available from November 1, 2025 - January 1 2026
an Author signature and more for inside your book

A Life Lived to Bring You the Story About the Fairbanks Family
Representing Common People Doing Uncommon Things to Build this Country

The Story Behind the Story
A Lifetime and 10 years

Why This Book Was Written and A Message to All

It seems as if someone in my family was always interested in our family lineage and history. Because of their interest, I knew early that the Fairbanks family built the oldest frame-house in North America in 1637 and that a Schweizer ancestor followed the gold rush to California and was stopped by Natives along the way.

After earning my nursing degree, working both in hospitals and on a helicopter, and giving birth to two kids, it was the children’s school project that launched the next adventure in my life. The school challenged its students to name three generations in their family. Together, my kids and I discovered we could do that and more. The Fairbankses could be traced back to England. The children became bored after their assignment was completed, but I couldn’t put it down. This was the early 1990s. I continued to amass research of all family lines and of all eras of history. I found myself researching any information I could about the Fairbanks who came from England.

My mission and passion really began in 1997. A great aunt, Florence Violet (Fairbanks) Biggs (1913-1997), and a second cousin, Harold Stanley Fairbanks (1927-1987), had been sharing family research. Harold worked as a night watchman at the National Archives. On breaks, he explored the Fairbanks history and sent it back to Violet to organize and store. I knew of their work and always vowed to contact Violet about their findings. She lived an hour and a half away.

One day, while the children were in school, I tried to call Violet. I knew she was about 84 years old, so I let the dial phone ring at least 10 times. This was unlike me. I was just ready to hang up when someone answered.

“Violet? Violet Biggs?” I asked. A long hesitation ensued.

  “No, I’m just cleaning her house.” A long pause. “She died three days ago.”

I couldn’t speak. Finally, I explained my relationship with Violet and my interest in the Fairbanks family history. “Do you know what has happened to Violet and Harold Fairbanks’s research?

     “Why, Bob and Wilma Rank, relatives, have it,” she said.

They were Fairbanks relatives, but I didn’t know them. I was so disappointed. Then the lady explained they lived in Overland Park, Kansas. That was only 20 minutes from me.

 Had I not called Violet when I did, all the research she and Harold had compiled would have been gone, at least to me. I worked a long time with Bob and Wilma who were willing to share all the research.

At this point neither my parents, Lloyd and Betty (Schweizer) Fairbanks, nor I had ever visited the Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts. So, they were eager to travel with me from Missouri on a family history trip. We proceeded to Dedham and Lancaster, Massachusetts and Putney, Vermont. These were areas where my early pioneer families settled.

The Fairbanks House was closed when we arrived, but the next day we were able to take a tour. Thayer Museum and Archives in Lancaster, MA, was closing when we arrived there, but the staff allowed us to hurriedly photocopy the documents we needed. In Putney, the historical society asked me to interpret some of the early documents from the Fairbanks family.

After my father died, I led a second family history tour. This time with my mother, who feels like a Fairbanks, my sister, Shawnee, and cousin, Twila, and their teenage children. This trip took us through Ohio, another site of early settlement of our ancestors. Before we began this time, I researched Ohio to make the most of our trip.

Letter written from Alpheus Fairbanks to his wife during the Civil War.

On the last day before we left, I searched the internet one last time. It was as if there was a glow in front of me “Blue as Blue Can Be,” a book about the Civil War that contains the letters Alpheus Fairbanks wrote to his wife, Amanda, while he fought along side his two younger brothers in the 45th Ohio Infantry/Cavalry. Alpheus was my second great-grandfather who died as the 176th person in the Confederate prison of Andersonville even before the stockade was finished. We knew very little about him. Tears came to my eyes.

You think I digress from the original English family, yet there is an important message in sharing this. A verbatim copy of Alpheus’ letters was given to a non-relative professor at University of Florida. He wrote the book sharing the letters and explaining what was happening to these three Fairbanks soldiers during the Civil War at the time he wrote the letters.

I was able to contact the author, Robert Kendall, and his wife, Judith. He told me that he had tried to contact someone in the family line of these soldiers to share what he had learned and the letters that were given to him. That person was my grandfather, Lloyd R. Fairbanks, who had died in 1984.

Shortly afterwards, Robert was no longer able to talk with me, but his wife sent copies of all the letters they had received and a few that weren’t in Robert’s book. She asked how she could let people know about the book. I knew nothing about marketing a book then, but I spread the word to our family line as widely as I could. I learned that you can write a book that would be meaningful to people, but it does no good if people don’t know it is available.

While spreading this news to relatives in Texas, I learned about an article written in 2012 about our English Fairbanks of the 1600s and earlier. This was written by Ruth Joseph Fairbanks and James Swan Landberg for the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 166 (July 2012): 165-87. I believe this is what ignited my passion to write the original Fairbanks story in America. I didn’t stop there. I included the Fairbanks’s friends, the Prescott family from Sowerby, England, that came to the New World a short time later. The book included the development of both Dedham and Lancaster Massachusetts.

Ah, by 2019, I found I had researched and written enough material to fill three books. I was heartbroken. I loved the beginning of the book and telling the story of both families. However, no one would read a book that large. As I sulked over what to do, the first inklings of COVID hit. I realized that one of the great plagues of England happened in 1625 when John Fairbanks died within a few days of writing his will in the height of the plague. That was the father of Jonathan Fairbanks, the immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.

As Covid progressed, I realized that the two impossible epidemics were very similar. No one knew what was causing the diseases. They didn’t know how to treat them. The doctors wore head to toe coverings including a grotesque mask in 1600s. Churches, inns, taverns, entertainment, and markets were closed. People were not free to move around the country. Many people were dying. Instead of refrigerated trucks loaded with bodies, a cart traveled around towns picking up the bodies to be buried in mass graves in churchyards. The new story had begun in my head.

Just after I had started my Fairbankshistory.com blog in 2019, I got an email from England. The person wrote about the 1650s house her family was renovating. She found documents that made her believe this was a house that belonged to the Fairbanks family in 1618. This coincided with the information presented by Ruth Joseph and James Landberg. It was too late. I couldn’t go to England during COVID. Luckily, in 2022, I was able to visit the website follower and her family and stay in the house believed to have belonged to the Fairbanks family in Thornton-in-Craven, England area.

Lance Jonathan Fairbanks painting the cover for Made To Last Forever…

Just as I was finishing the book, a distant relative Lance, a follower of the blog, approached me at the National Fairbanks Reunion. He asked if he could paint a picture for the cover of the book. I was delighted, however, my lack of knowledge about publishing my book made me hesitant. I had already spent a great deal of money on professional editors. I had no idea what a cover designer might need in the way of art for the front cover. We agreed that he would paint the picture of his choice, and it would be used for the cover of the book if it was suitable. Lance Jonathan Fairbanks’s painting is on the cover of Made to Last Forever: A Family. A House. A Nation.

Now the book is finished and published and accessible. All these occurrences seem as miracles to make the family history information and stories available to you and to give you a way to share it with your generations to come. And yes, all your motivation and support has helped me through the ten long and sometimes tough years.

Book about the Original Fairbanks in Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s

You ask, what did I learn about preserving the history of our families? Don’t wait for the “right time” to gather and share your family lineage and history. The “right time” may be too late. Do it now!

To encourage you to capture your heritage history, I have added blank pages in the back of Made To Last Forever:… This area is for writing your family lineage, regardless if it is the Fairbanks line or not. I encourage you to underline and write in the margins of the book. Write what you know of your family, write questions you have. Make this book the beginning of sharing your family lineage and stories with your family.

Here is your chance to share the original Fairbanks family history. From November 1, 2025 to January 1, 2026, if purchase multiple books to share, I will send you book plates with my signature, a likeness of Jonathan Fairbanks’s signature and a likeness of Jonathan Fairbanks’s wax seal for each of the books you purchased. Just send me a picture of your receipt or the books you purchased and your USPS address.

Where to Purchase the Book

The Fairbanks House Museum Gift Shop
The Dedham Museum and Archive Gift Shop
Amazon
Dedham Exchange Gift Shop

The Fairbanks Patriot Project

The Fairbanks Patriot Project will return after January 1, 2026, and continue until July 4, 2026. We will continue to observe the America 250 celebration of the Declaration of Independence when the Fairbanks family became part of the United States instead of British subjects that they had been since their early days in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.