When William Charles Fenwick was born on 6 June 1881, in Shelburne, Chittenden, Vermont, United States, his father, Henry Fenwick, was 23 and his mother, Mary Rachel North, was 24. He married Edith Mary Safford on 28 November 1903, in Plattsburgh, Clinton, New York, United States. They were the parents of at least 2 sons. He died on 8 October 1960, in Williston, Chittenden, Vermont, United States, at the age of 79.
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A federal law prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The Act was the first law to prevent all members of a national group from immigrating to the United States.
Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
A law that funded many irrigation and agricultural projects in the western states.
English (northern) and Scottish: habitational name from either of two places in Northumberland or from one in Yorkshire, all of which are so named from Old English fenn ‘marsh, fen’ + wīc ‘outlying dairy farm’. There is also a place in Ayrshire, Scotland, which has the same name and origin. This last is the source of at least some early examples of the surname: Nicholaus Fynwyk was provost of Ayr in 1313, and Reginald de Fynwyk or Fynvyk appears as bailie and alderman of the same burgh in 1387 and 1401. The name is usually pronounced ‘Fennick’.
History: The name was brought over from England by several forebears, including George Fenwick (1603–56/7), a colonist from Brinkburn, Northumberland. He was one of the group of lords and gentlemen to whom the earl of Warwick, president of the Council for New England, granted forty leagues of territory west of the Narragansett River. George took up residence with his family at Saybrook, CT, in 1639. John Fenwick of Bynfield, Berkshire, England, established himself at Salem, NJ, in June 1675, the first Quaker settlement on the Delaware.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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