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. Territorial governorship The Illinois Territory was created in 1809. It included all of what today are the states of Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as parts of Minnesota and Michigan. Its European-American and African-American populations were almost entirely concentrated in the south, in the region later known as Egypt. President James Madison first appointed Kentucky politician John Boyle as its governor. Boyle collected his salary for the position for 21 days but then resigned to take Edwards' job as Kentucky Chief Justice, while friends in Washington helped secure Edwards' appointment as territorial governor. In the meantime, Territorial Secretary Nathaniel Pope, a cousin of Edwards, had to assume the powers of acting governor, creating Illinois' first counties and appointing officials to form the new government. Only 34 years old at the time of his appointment, Ninian Edwards is the youngest man ever to govern Illinois as either a state or a territory. Edwards settled in the American Bottom on land he received as a grant upon his appointment as governor. He named his new farm Elvirade, after his wife. Along with his family, Edwards brought a number of slaves, whom he did not free even though the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had made slavery illegal in the