Edmund Fanning (April 24, 1739 – February 28, 1818) was a British North American colonial administrator and military leader. Born in New York, he became a lawyer and politician in North Carolina in the 1760s. He first came to fame as the focus of hatred of the Regulators, and led anti-Regulator militia in the War of the Regulation. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, he was driven from his home in New York, and joined the British Army, recruiting other Loyalists. He served during campaigns in New England and the South. At the end of the war in 1783 he became a United Empire Loyalist, settling in Nova Scotia.
Fanning was appointed lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia not long after his arrival, and helped oversee the resettlement of other Loyalist refugees in the province. In 1786 he was appointed governor of Saint John's Island[1], which was renamed Prince Edward Island during his tenure. He served in that post until 1804. He retired to London, where he died in 1818.
Edmund is buried in a vault inside St. Mary Abbots Parish Church, on the corner of Kensington Church Street and Kensington High Street, London W8 4LA.
Family connections: Edmund was guardian and mentor of his twin sister's young son John Wickham (1763-1839). John became an accomplished lawyer, most remembered for his successful defense of former U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr in 1807.[2]
Excerpts (verbatim) from Edmund's profile in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
FANNING, EDMUND, army officer, colonial administrator, and land agent; b. 24 April 1739 in that part of Southold Township, N.Y., which is now Riverhead, son of Captain James Fanning and Hannah Smith; d. 28 Feb. 1818 in London, England.
Edmund Fanning graduated from Yale College in 1757 and moved to Childsburgh (Hillsborough) in Orange County, N.C., where five years later he was admitted to the bar. Rapidly acquiring offices and reputation, in the 1760s he served variously as a militia colonel, registrar of deeds, assemblyman for Orange County, and a Superior Court judge. Reputed “the best educated man in the province,” Fanning became a particular favourite of Governor William Tryon, but he was also the object of great public outcry as an interloping pluralist and exploiter of the common people.
After the [American Revolution] Fanning settled in Nova Scotia, where on 23 Sept. 1783 he was sworn in as lieutenant governor. Two years later, on 30 Nov. 1785, he married Phoebe Maria Burns (who had been, whispered his enemies, his cook and housekeeper); the couple subsequently had a son and three daughters.
Fanning had been hoping to retire for some years and, when in 1804 he was finally given permission to step down effective in 1805, the Island was well out of its economic doldrums and entering a period of almost unprecedented prosperity. The British government allowed him an annual pension of £500 from the revenues of the Island. Although he spent some months in London in 1805, his satisfaction with the Island was such that he continued to reside in Charlottetown until 1813, when old age forced him to move permanently to London; he was living in Upper Seymour Street [near Marble Arch] at the time of his death.
Fanning had always stood in good favour at the War Office, and he received regular promotions in the army list, eventually becoming a full general in April 1808. His last years were marred by the death in 1812 of his only son, who had joined the British army at the age of 14. His three daughters, all unmarried at the time of his death, inherited extensive property in Vermont and on Prince Edward Island.
Edmund Fanning has not received the same attention as some other loyalist governors of British North America, but he was perhaps the most successful of the breed. Alone among the early administrators of Prince Edward Island, he emerged from the colony with his reputation intact. That he escaped untarnished was to a large extent the result of his careful, and ambiguous, stand on the land question.
↑ Edmund requested guardianship of John when the boy reached age 14. With Edmund's assistance, John attended a French military academy in Arras and later studied law at William & Mary College in Virginia. See John Wickham's profile for details of John's life and career, as well as excerpts of correspondence between his mother and her twin brother Edmund.
W.F. Brooks, in his History of the Fanning Family (1905), wrote a 27-page section devoted to Gen. Edmund Fanning starting on p.672:
J. M. Bumsted, “FANNING, EDMUND,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed November 11, 2014:
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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Edmund by comparing test results with other carriers of his ancestors' Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA.
However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line.
It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Edmund: