Located south of Madison between Highway 441 South, Pierce Dairy Road, and Seven Islands Road, Fairview grew up between Bethany and Godfrey as an unincorporated agricultural community with a strong identity centered on Fairview School. Formerly called Mitchem’s School after the family who donated the land for its construction, the school had one teacher and seven grade levels, and its building was also used for Sunday services and Sunday school. The community supported a sawmill and two cotton gins, and its landscape was made up mostly of large farms that were first planted in cotton and later shifted to dairy pasture. Although no commercial center developed, small country stores, subsistence agriculture, and truck farming met many local needs. In the 1950s, W.O. Pierce, who operated a large dairy in Atlanta, opened an important branch operation there. The Fairview Homemakers Club, founded during the era of Cooperative Extension Service home economics initiatives, sponsored numerous projects for the improvement of the community, and charter member Genie Maude Wilson chronicled Fairview in a weekly newspaper column for more than 64 years from the 1920s into the 1980s. Through the pride of its residents, Fairview came to be recognized as a significant part of county history.