Trivia / The History of the Fairchild Family

• Science Marches On: When Mr Fairchild shows the children a globe, he tells them that the globe is divided, by general agreement, into four unequal parts, "namely, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America." There is no mention of Antarctica, which was definitively discovered in 1820, or of Australia, which, however, was known and colonized by the British at the time.
• Write What You Know: Mary Martha Sherwood was the daughter of a clergyman. Some of the events in the story mirror situations that happened in her family while growing up. The Fairchild children are named after some children of the author’s who died an early death.