Charles Fairchild was born and raised in Ohio. After graduating from Harvard in 1858, he served in the Union Army and briefly attended Harvard Law (without taking a degree) before entering the paper manufacturing business. He was “a close friend and drinking companion of James R. Osgood and his knights of the quill—Aldrich, Samuel Clemens, and William Dean Howells." He helped Howells to finance his house in Belmont, and for a brief time in the early 1880s they were neighbors. Clemens probably first met him in 1874 at the banquet at the Parker House in Boston for Atlantic Monthly contributors and supporters. (Fairchild had advanced $20,000 to Melancthon Hurd and Henry Houghton to purchase ownership of the magazine from James R. Osgood.) (L6, p. 319). He was also the brother of Gen. Lucius Fairchild, the Civil War veteran, diplomat, and tenth governor of Wisconsin.