My earliest proven FAIRBAIRN ancestors are Archibald FAIRBAIRN & Alison CROSSER. He's a mysterious chap supposedly from Swinton & Simprin, Berwickshire, where his son Walter was baptised. Said son appears to have had an aversion of the Established Church of Scotland. How else to explain the children who occasionally pop out of the woodwork with no baptism found?

At the bottom of this page is a map showing where some of the hatch/match/despatch events happened for the extended FAIRBAIRN tribe, and spice. More to come. Some coordinates are very precise and end up with wonderful aerial views of actual places, others are more generic.

My Fairbairns

  • FAIRBAIRN Descendants of Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Alison CROSSER: Other surnames - SCOTT, DAVIDSON, ROBERTSON (or ROBISON), FORSYTH, HERD
  • The neverending story The tale of a Fairbairn mystery that dna testing has "solved" - well the immediate questions possibly, but there's always one more ...
  • Fairbairn family photos (many thanks to those who have shared these with me and allowed them to be published )
  • FAIRBAIRN relations a list of all the FAIRBAIRN descendants (and spice) included on this site

DNA matched Fairbairns

Given the DNA evidence to date, The following tree shows all the Lineage 1e dna related families, although a couple of the linkages are open to conjecture.
For the dna evidence, check out the FAIRBAIRN pages on the DNA Surnames Site.

Potentially related families

It would be great to find male FAIRBAIRN surnamed descendants of the following families to join the FAIRBAIRN DNA project.
  • James & Mary Bell/Mabel (THOMSON) FAIRBAIRN The following family have Eckford connections, and as such may well be related to Archibald & Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN.
  • Walter and Agnes (RENTON) FAIRBAIRN This Walter's son Walter was a contender for the father of the above John in New York, now rejected as a paper trail for John in NY has been found. Both the son Walter, and my Walter were supposedly born Swinton, and about 3 years apart. To date, DNA will not help (as the only known descendants still bearing the surname FAIRBAIRN descend from an illegitimate son of the daughter Elizabeth).
    The elder Walter is of an age to be a brother to one of the Archibalds above - more conjecture!

Failing direct male line FAIRBAIRNs, or even as well as, we would be happy to hear from any descendant of any FAIRBAIRN lineage willing to participate by undertaking an autosomal DNA test (atDNA) in the form of FamilyTree DNA's FamilyFinder test.
A subsidy may be available to assist. Enquiries welcome! Please use the contact email in the footer.
If you have tested at Ancestry, MyHeritage or 23andme, do also get in touch, and please consider uploading your DNA file to GedMatch.com so that comparisons may be made with kits tested elsewhere from yours.
Free transfers are also available from each of those sites into FTDNA, MyHeritage, GEDmatch with a small unlock fee for access to the more advanced features. https://dna-explained.com/2019/11/04/dna-file-upload-download-and-transfer-instructions-to-and-from-dna-testing-companies If you need help for transfers, just ask, I'm happy to help.
FAIRBAIRN atDNA attributed to descendants of John and Bessie (Flint) FAIRBAIRN

Less closely DNA matched Fairbairns

In addition the families in Lineage 1e are shown to be a (more distant) dna match with "my" Archibald above. Anyone with any proof of how these are connected? Theories even?
Trees for those lines are shown in the Fairbairn One Name Study descendant charts prefaced by Lineage 1e.
Also check out the lineages section of the dna project

Assorted external links that may be of interest

  • Fairbairn surname One Name Study Attempts to put some method into my FAIRBAIRN research, and get the data I have collected over the years published and available to others
  • Fairbairn surname DNA project male FAIRBAIRN descendants would be most welcome to join this group to aid the investigation of possible linkages between the identified lines.
    All FAIRBAIRNs welcome, the project isn't just for me to prove my pet theories, although, if perchance your research overlaps with mine I'd particularly love to hear from you.
FAIRBAIRN Descendants (and spice): BDM Events
Where assorted FAIRBAIRN descendants (and spice) were hatched matched and despatched