Ninian Edwards - Early Life

Early Life

Ninian Edwards was born in 1775 to the prominent Edwards family in Montgomery County, Maryland. His mother, Margaret Beall Edwards, was from another prominent local family. His father Benjamin Edwards served in the Maryland House of Delegates, in Maryland's state ratifying convention for the U.S. Constitution, and in the United States House of Representatives, filling a vacant seat for two months. Ninian was educated by private tutors, one of whom was the future U.S. Attorney General William Wirt. He attended Dickinson College from 1790 to 1792 but did not graduate, leaving college to study law. His son Ninian W. Edwards wrote later that Edwards spent some of his time at Dickinson reading medicine, a field to which he devoted considerable time in his later years.

In 1794, at the age of 19, Edwards moved to Nelson County, Kentucky to manage some family land. He showed a great aptitude for business and leadership and was soon elected to a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives, before he was even eligible to vote. In 1802 he was awarded the rank of major in the militia. In 1803 he moved to Russellville, Kentucky, and won a succession of public offices: circuit court judge in 1803, presidential elector in 1804 (voting for Thomas Jefferson), and judge and finally chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which at the time was Kentucky's highest court. He joined the high court in 1806 and won the leadership position in 1808.

A well-educated landowning aristocrat, Edwards deliberately cultivated the image of the natural leader. Thomas Ford writes that he continued to dress like an 18th-century gentleman long after such fashions had gone out of style, and that his public speaking was marked by showy eloquence. Edwards consciously positioned himself in the select class of men who dominated Kentucky and, later, Illinois politics. In 1803 in Russellville, Edwards married Elvira Lane, a relative from Maryland.