Ninian Edwards (March 17, 1775July 20, 1833) was a founding political figure of the State of Illinois. He served as the first and only governor of the Illinois Territory from 1809 to until the territory was dissolved in 1818. He was then one of the first two United States senators from the State of Illinois from 1818 to 1824, and the third Governor of Illinois from 1826 to 1830. In a time and place where personal coalitions were more influential than parties, Edwards led one of the two main factions in frontier Illinois politics. Born in Maryland, Edwards began his political career in Kentucky, where he served as a legislator and judge. He rose to the position of Chief Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1808, at the time Kentucky's highest court. In 1809, U.S. President James Madison appointed him to govern the newly created Illinois Territory. He held that post for three terms, overseeing the territory's transition first to democratic "second grade" government, and then to statehood in 1818. On its second day in session, the Illinois General Assembly elected Edwards to the U.S. Senate, where conflict with rivals damaged him politically. Edwards won an unlikely 1826 election to become Governor of Illinois. Conflict with the legislature over state bank regulations marked Edwards' administration, as did the pursuit of Indian removal. As governor or territorial governor he twice sent Illinois militia against Native Americans, in the War of 1812 and the Winnebago War, and signed treaties for the cession of Native American land. Edwards returned to private life when his term ended in 1830 and died of cholera two years later. 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 Wirt 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