Elanor Gamgee

A name from Lórien

Elanor was born at Bag End on 25 March T.A. 3021 (S.R. 1421), the first of the thirteen children of Samwise Gamgee and Rose Cotton, on the day the Shire was already keeping as the anniversary of the fall of Sauron. Sam wanted a flower-name, as was the custom for Shire girls, but thought none of the Shire flowers good enough, and it was Frodo who suggested the small golden star-flower of Lothlórien, the elanor of the mound of Cerin Amroth, and predicted that the child would look the part. She did: Elanor grew up with golden hair, a thing hardly known among hobbits before, and the Shire thought it was in the air since Sam's replanting, for many children born in the year 1420 had it too. She was called Elanor the Fair.

She was six months old when Frodo left the Shire, and it was for her, among others, that Sam turned back from the Grey Havens with a full heart. Frodo had told him that he would be the most famous gardener in history and read to his children from the Red Book, and Elanor was the first of those children.

The Queen's maid

In S.R. 1436 King Elessar rode north and stayed for a time by Lake Evendim, coming to the Brandywine Bridge to greet his friends, since he would not enter the Shire. There Sam was given the Star of the Dúnedain, and the fifteen-year-old Elanor was made a maid of honour to Queen Arwen. She spent time in the King's company at Gondor and at Annúminas, and it was at his house on Lake Evendim that the family's later connection to the North-kingdom began.

The Undertowers

In 1451 Elanor married Fastred of Greenholm on the Far Downs, and their son Elfstan Fairbairn was born in 1454. The next year, at Sam's request, Pippin as Thain named Fastred Warden of the Westmarch, the new land between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills that the King had granted to the Shire in 1452. Fastred and Elanor moved to the Undertowers on the hills, within sight of the Sea, and their descendants took the name Fairbairns of the Towers. On 22 September 1482, after Rose's death, Sam rode to the Undertowers and gave Elanor the Red Book of Westmarch, and then rode on to the Havens. She kept it, and her family kept it after her, and the Wardens of the Westmarch were for generations the guardians of the record of the War of the Ring.

Lived at the Undertowers as matriarch of the Fairbairns of the Towers; the date of her death is not recorded.