the Moderator of the Congregationalists' "General Association of Michigan" meeting held in Flint In July 1889, President Benjamin Harrison nominated Fairfield to be the consul of the United States at Lyons in place of Lawson V. Moore. His son George D. Fairfield was vice-consul in Lyons at the same time. He returned from France in 1893 and lived in Grand Rapids, where he lived an intellectual life of writing and speaking until 1896. In 1896, he became a pastor again at his former church in Mansfield Ohio and then in 1900 he retired to Oberlin, where he died in November 1904. Retirement and death In the theological field, Fairfield, having been a Baptist early in his career and Congregationalist pastor later in life, 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 on November 7, 1904 in Oberlin, Ohio at the age of eighty-three in Oberlin, eleven years after its publication. Family life fairfield was the son of Micajah Fairfield and Hannah (Wynn) Fairfield. He was married three times. He married his first wife, Lucia Ann Jennison, daughter of Dr. Charles Jennison and Betsy Mahan, on August 27, 1845. They had three children together. He married his second wife Mary A. Baldwin on August 22, 1859 and had seven children together. He married his third wife Mary Allen Tibbitts on June 16, 1883; they had no children together. Fairfield was descended from a Frenchman by the name of Beauchamp, at some point the name was anglicised to Fairfield. References External links Biography of Edmund Burke Fairfield at the Fairfield Family site Fairfield Family database Picture etc of Fairfield at the Oberlin College site etext of Fairfield's Letters on Baptism 1821 births 1904 deaths Republican Party Michigan state senators Baptist ministers from the United States American Congregationalist ministers Colgate University alumni Oberlin College alumni Lieutenant Governors of Michigan Hillsdale College people Marietta College alumni University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty Indiana University Bloomington alumni Denison University alumni People from Oberlin, Ohio Politicians from Parkersburg, West Virginia People from Manistee, Michigan Chancellors of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Baptists from Michigan Baptists from New York (state) 19th-century American politicians 19th-century American clergy