Deborah Clarke was born about 1708 in Salem, Massachusetts, the daughter of Francis Clarke and a mother whose identity is less consistently reported in surviving genealogical summaries. She grew up in a New England seaport shaped by Puritan and later Congregational traditions, Atlantic commerce, fishing, craft production, and memories of the Salem witch trials that had occurred only a generation earlier. As a girl in a respectable mercantile family, Deborah likely learned reading, writing, religion, sewing, household accounts, food preservation, and the management of servants and supplies. Salem’s commercial culture would also have familiarized her with ships, imported goods, and the long absences of men engaged in maritime work. Detailed records of her schooling and childhood personality have not survived. Deborah married William Fairfax, a British colonial official and member of the wider Fairfax family. She was his second wife and entered a household that already included children from his marriage to Sarah Walker. Her marriage required adaptation to repeated relocation. The family lived in Massachusetts, where William served in customs, and later moved to Virginia when he became agent for his cousin Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax. At Belvoir plantation on the Potomac, Deborah managed an elite household and helped raise both her own children and stepchildren. The family’s status and comfort depended upon enslaved labor. Her children included Bryan Fairfax, who later became a clergyman and peer, while her stepchildren included George William Fairfax. Before Belvoir became associated with George Washington’s social education, Deborah had been shaped by a Salem upbringing, mercantile domestic skills, marriage into a transatlantic family, stepmotherhood, migration, and plantation management.