George Winthrop Fairchild was born in Oneonta in May 6, 1854 of "poor but honest parents". At 13 he left school to support his mother, first doing farm work at $8.00 a month and then becoming a printer's apprentice with the Oneonta Herald at $3.00 a week. He was a master printer at 17 and a year later was shop foreman for the Bainbridge Republican. Then wanderlust hit him and for some years he was a tramp printer, traveling from city to city throughout the east and middle west, until finally he returned to Oneonta and became foreman of the Oneonta Herald Shop. He saved his money, invested it shrewdly and was soon able to buy an interest in the paper. Eventually he was to become its editor and sole owner. His first big chance came when he became interested in the manufacture and sale of an automatic press invented by a Worcester man, D. T. Erickson. Fairchild went to London and sold the English rights for $100,000 and deposited the money in a British bank. The bank failed the next day, thus wiping out the profit which would have put the company on its feet.
He was interested in banking and in the manufacture of time recorders; elected as a Republican to the Sixtieth and to the five succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1907-March 3, 1919); appointed by President Taft on August 10, 1910, as special commissioner to the First Centenary of Mexico; president and director of the White Plains Development Co., White Plains, N.Y.; died in New York City December 31, 1924. He and his wife and son are interred in Glenwood Cemetery, Oneonta, N.Y.