FAIRFIELD  , a

city and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 51 m . W. by N. of Burlington . Pop . (1890) 3391; (19o0) 4689, of whom a06 were foreign-born and S4 were negroes; (1go5) 5009; (1910) 4970 . Area, about 2.25 sq. m . Fairfield is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways, The city is in a blue grass country, in which much live stock is bred; and it is an important market for draft horses . It is the seat of Parsons College (Presbyterian, co-educational, 1875), endowed by Lewis Baldwin Parsons, Sr . (1798–1855), a merchant of Buffalo, N.Y . The college offers classical, philosophical and scientific courses, and has a school of music and an academic department; in 1907–1908 it had 19 instructors and 257 students, of whom 93 were in the college and 97 were in the school of music . Fairfield has a Carnegie library (1892), and a museum with a collection of laces . Immediately E. of the city is an attractive Chautauqua Park, of 30 acres, with an auditorium capable of seating about 4000 persons; and there is an annual Chautauqua assembly . The principal manufactures of Fairfield are farm waggons, farming implements, drain-tile, malleable iron, cotton gloves and mittens and cotton garments .

The

municipality owns its water-works and an electric-lighting plant . Fairfield was settled in 1839; was incorporated as a town in 1847; and was first chartered as a city in the same year . See Charles H . Fletcher, Jefferson County, Iowa: Centennial History (Fairfield, 1876) .