Charles Snowden Fairfax, 10th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (March 8, 1829 – April 4, 1869) was an American Democratic politician of California. He held a Scottish peerage. Fairfax was lured west as part of the gold rush. The town of Fairfax, California, is named for him. Early life and family He was born on Vaucluse Plantation in Virginia, the eldest son of Albert Fairfax (April 15, 1802 – May 9, 1835) and Caroline Eliza Snowden (April 21, 1812 – December 28, 1899), who were married on April 7, 1828. His younger brother was John Fairfax, 11th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (September 13, 1830 – September 28, 1900), who became the 11th Lord Fairfax of Cameron upon Charles' death in 1869. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1762–1846). On May 1, 1838, his mother married William R. Saunders. Lineage He was collaterally related to Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax, who was a Parliamentary general during the English Civil Wars. He was also related to Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who relinquished his English estates to his brother Robert Fairfax, 7th Lord Fairfax of Cameron and emigrated to America, where he settled on a plantation of more than five million acres (4,000 km2) in Virginia, which he inherited from his mother, Catherine Colepeper. Thomas Fairfax was the first person to employ George Washington as a surveyor. The 7th Lord, Robert Fairfax, died without issue in 1793 and the title passed to an American second cousin, the Rev. Bryan Fairfax, 8th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1736–1802), a priest of the Episcopal Church and rector of a parish in Alexandria, who was the son of William Fairfax (1691–1757) of Belvoir and Deborah Clarke (1707–1747). The clergyman then became the 8th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. Bryan Fairfax, whose wife was Elizabeth Cary (1730–1757), was succeeded in 1802 by his eldest son, Thomas Fairfax (1762–1846). Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron married three times; his son by his third wife, Margaret Herbert (1783–1858), Albert, who had died during the lifetime of his father, left two sons, Charles and John. Therefore, Charles S. Fairfax, the grandson of Thomas, the 9th Lord, succeeded to the title of Lord Fairfax in 1846—a title, however, that he never claimed, preferring to live as an American citizen. California Fairfax, still the potential 10th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, left Richmond, Virginia, with 74 other