Fairbanks Family in the West
History of the Organization
In about 1907 the Fairbanks families met and formed an association, calling it the Fairbanks Family of Utah. The organization consisted of the descendants of Joseph and Polly Brooks Fairbanks, namely, the families of David, John Boylston, and Harriet, who came west with the Mormon Pioneers. The first officers of the family organization were Abram Doremus, President, and Preston Richards, Secretary.
In 1914, Articles of Association were written up and submitted to the family by J. Leo Fairbanks, Hattie D. Hagman, and Abram Doremus, President. Reunions were held in various locations throughout the state of Utah including Payson, Tooele, and Salt Lake City.
 One favorite spot for family reunions was at the home of John Boylston and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks in Payson, Utah. Following the deaths of John Boylston in 1875 and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks in 1898, Lillie Marie Fairbanks, a daughter, continued to live in their home until her death in 1921. Home ownership then went to her sister, Mary Fairbanks Brown, until she died in 1938.
On March 3, 1938, one month prior to her death, Mary Fairbanks Brown deeded the home to the living descendants of John Boylston and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks, namely, John B. Fairbanks, Frank Fairbanks, George A. Fairbanks, and Alicia F. Simmons. Mary (May) wanted the home to be kept as a memorial to the Fairbanks name. Just prior to her death, there had been a lot of concern among family members as to what should be done with the home.
Later that year, in an effort to preserve the home, there was an attempt to lease it to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. That plan, however, never worked out. The following year, on February 28, 1939, the John Boylston Fairbanks home was bequeathed to the Fairbanks Family organization. A finance committee was selected consisting of Willard Richards, Frank Simmons, and Clarence Fairbanks to raise funds to take care of the home.
 In 1939 a new set of articles of incorporation were also presented to the family. Under the new direction from family officers and with Lynn Reed Fairbanks as president, the name of the family organization was changed to The Fairbanks Family in the West. The John Boylston Fairbanks Home in Payson, Utah, also became the permanent location for family reunions.
Annual family reunions continued at the home until 1943 when war conditions prevented people from attending. Still the family organization tried to raise awareness of the John Boylston Fairbanks home as a gathering place for establishing family ties, and said, "We are proud of this gift and hope in the near future to meet there annually to carry on our association. We have received a wonderful heritage from our grandparents and we must honor them and live up to their ideals."
Following the death of Mary (May) Fairbanks Brown in 1938 until the late 1970's, the home stood vacant in Payson except for family reunions. Each year, part of the family reunions in Payson would consist of fixing up the property and cleaning the home. One year, after hearing that the city was considering condemning the home due to safety concerns, Arlo Fairbanks and his crew of painters spent time and money to fix up the home and safety concerns were alleviated.
During this time, many developers offered to purchase the land. They wanted to demolish the home and use the property to build other structures. In the early 1960's the family organization was in the process of publishing a book for the family and could have used the money from the sale of the property. Several Fairbanks family members, however, were opposed to the idea and wrote letters to the family officers expressing their feelings. A non-family member, Charles F. Montgomery, Senior Research Fellow of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware, as well as an associate of Jonathan Fairbanks, wrote:
Dear Friends:
You may wonder at my addressing you as friends. But having known Jonathan Fairbanks first as a student and then as a fellow worker for several years, and having visited his family in Salt Lake City, and having seen the wonderful things the Mormons have accomplished there, I feel a feeling of kinship toward you. Sometime past, Jonathan showed me photographs of adobe buildings built by the Mormons in and around Salt Lake City. He showed me these photographs at the time he gave a talk on this type of architecture to our staff and students at the Museum. To me this type of building was new and highly interesting. I have never seen it before… This morning Jonathan has brought to my attention the fact that the John Boylston Fairbanks house in Payson, Utah, may be sold and go out of the custody of the Fairbanks family. May I urge you not to allow the house to be sold. The house is an important house, much more important than it may seem to you who know it well and see it frequently. It is a part of one's everyday experience, and consequently it may seem ordinary. If the house is sold, you know not what will happen to it. My experience over the past twenty-five years has shown again and again that nothing is safe from destruction in this day and age except for the eternal vigilance of those who care. More than any other group of people in the United States, the Mormons have shown they treasure and place importance on what their forbears have done and accomplished. You have kept faith with the past and have treasured your inheritance. You have cherished the eternal verities which bring strength to each succeeding generation through knowledge of the past. You must continue to do so. Please don't let the house be sold or let it run down.
The cost is little; the gain is great…
Another letter, by Eugene Fairbanks, dated April 1, 1964, reads:
It is difficult to think that the homestead laboriously constructed of hand molded adobe, should fall to a few strokes of a power shovel. Believe me, I don't feel we should stand in the way of progress, but land in Payson is not so dear or badly needed, as was the case where the Salt Lake Theater or Social Hall once stood and the pressures of progress do not necessarily threaten its future… Let me therefore plead that while still striving forward, we do not obliterate all the footsteps, edifices and accomplishments of those to whom we owe so much, so much more than can be measured in coin. Let me plead that we strive to publish the book, but also protect and restore, the homestead, something that should be dear to the hearts of all of us.
In 1972, following the creation of a state register of "districts, sites, buildings, and objects significant in Utah history," the John Boylston Fairbanks home was listed on the Utah State Register of Historic Sites.
In 1977, in an effort to preserve the Fairbanks home as well as make it accessible to the public, Dr. Grant R. Fairbanks approached the State of Utah Division of Parks and Recreation with a proposal to move the Fairbanks home from Payson to the developing Old Deseret Pioneer Village in Salt Lake City, near This is the Place Monument. At a family reunion that summer on August 20, the family met in Payson and voted to donate the home to the State with the following contingencies:
- The State would accept the home and move it to the Pioneer Trail State Park at State expense.
- The home would be restored and reassembled at a site deemed most appropriate by the planners of the Pioneer State Park.
- The home and family would be given proper historic recognition.
- The home's history would be made available to those visiting the home.
- The family would be allowed access to congregate at the home at least once a year to renew bonds with this item of family heritage.
The state agreed to pay the cost of moving and restoring the home "with dignity and historical accuracy." Finally, in 1980, after negotiations with the Utah Historical Society, the house was moved to Salt Lake City and restored at This is the Place Heritage Park, formerly Pioneer Trail State Park, and This is the Place State Park. The rejuvenated home was dedicated on July 25, 1981.
The process of moving the home from Payson to Salt Lake City was a difficult one. Ray E. Austin, the contractor moving the home, explained since the building was too delicate to make the sixty-mile trek intact from Payson to Salt Lake City, the home had to be taken apart brick by brick, transported, and then reassembled on its present site. Weak spots in the construction were reinforced and the entire building was insulated, but other than that, it looks pretty much like it must have when John Fairbanks finished it, he concluded.
While the restoration process was taking place, the family organization spent several hours relocating original items to the home, making its restoration to the park as authentic as possible. A committee headed by Loraine Walker Nebeker was initiated. Letters were sent out, and people were contacted to reclaim personal belongings of John Boylston and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks.
Some of the items collected were one wash stand, kitchen chairs, two small chairs made by John Boylston Fairbanks, an organ donated by Bill Nebeker, one bed, and other items of that period donated by Lydia Yates Burrows.
 Dedication Day included family members from all over the country. Five hundred to six hundred family members were in attendance. The meeting was held in the social hall next to the home. Kathryn Fairbanks Kirk, President of the Fairbanks Family in the West, conducted the meeting and welcomed the group. Talks by family members included Jonathan L. Fairbanks, Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Dr. Grant R. Fairbanks, Ray E. Austin, the General Contractor for the removal and restoration of the home to the park, Lydia Yates Burrows, and Keith M. Walker.
 Other speakers were James D. Moyle, Chairman of the Board of Parks and Recreation of the State of Utah, and Lt. Gov. David Monson. Elder Howard W. Hunter was also a speaker at the ceremonies. Elder Hunter reminded family members and friends who attended the dedication that the house was built before Utah was a state, when the area was "under the jurisdiction of the Church."
"I wonder what the feelings of John and Sarah Fairbanks would have been if they could have been with us today," Elder Hunter said. "I think they would have told us that it's good to look backward, but what they expect of us is that we look forward, and that we pass on what we have learned from them to our children, and our children's children."
In 1982, there was a yearlong effort to contact all the members of the John Boylston, David, and Harriet Fairbanks families. Once again family members came from all over, some attending a family reunion for the first time. Janet Lowe, a family member, wrote up this reunion in a double-page-spread article for the San Diego Tribune.
The highlight of the 1983 reunion was the distribution of the book, The Fairbanks Family in the West, containing life sketches of four generations of the Fairbanks family in the West beginning with Joseph Fairbanks and his wife, Mary (Polly) Brooks Fairbanks. The money to publish the book came from the property sold from the empty lot of the John Boylston and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks home.
In July 1984, at a reunion at This is the Place State Park, the John Boylston Fairbanks home was unanimously accepted by the family as the official emblem (logo) of the Fairbanks Family in the West.
In 1997, the family organization celebrated its sesquicentennial anniversary of the Mormon pioneers. Among these pioneers were the first Fairbanks family members who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 6, 1847. Four hundred people attended the reunion, including family members from at least eleven different states.
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