Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fanning, Edmund
FANNING, EDMUND (1737–1818), colonial governor, born in Long Island, state of New York, in 1737, was not improbably descended from Edmund Fanning, who, it is said, escaped from Dublin during the Irish massacre of 1641, and after eleven years' wandering found a resting-place in America in that part of New London now called Groton (Savage, Genealog. Dict. of First Settlers of New England, ii. 140). He was graduated at Yale in 1757, and afterwards practised as a lawyer in Hillsborough, North Carolina, where he was appointed colonel of militia in 1763, clerk of the superior court in 1765, and was subsequently elected to the legislature. Another office held by him was the recordership of deeds, and to his abuses of this trust and fraudulent charges was mainly owing the rebellion of the regulators in Governor Tryon's administration. Through his malpractices ‘nearly all the estates in Orange county were loaded with doubts as to their titles, and new and unnecessary deeds were demanded.’ Added to this his zeal in quelling opposition to the severe exactions of the government, and in bringing the leaders of that opposition to the scaffold, rendered him obnoxious to the people. To escape their fury he accompanied his father-in-law, Governor Tryon, to New York in 1771 as his private secretary. When he subsequently applied to the North Carolina legislature, through Governor Martin, the successor of Governor Tryon, for compensation for losses from destruction of his property, his petition met with a unanimous rejection, and the governor was censured for presenting it and thus ‘trifling with the dignity of the house.’ His services to the crown, however, were not forgotten, and in 1774 he received from the British government the profitable office of surveyor-general. In 1777 he raised and commanded a corps of 460 loyalists, which came to be known as the ‘associated refugees’ or ‘king's American regiment.’ During the war he was twice wounded, and in 1779 his property was confiscated. Towards the close of the war he migrated to Nova Scotia, becoming councillor and lieutenant-governor on 23 Sept. 1783. In 1787 he succeeded Walter Paterson as lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward Island. A charge of tyranny preferred against him while holding this office was dismissed by the privy council on 1 Aug. 1792 (Report on certain Complaints, &c.) He remained lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward Island until succeeded, on 19 May 1804, by J. F. W. Des Barres (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. pt. i. p. 475). He was made a colonel in the British army in December 1782, major-general in October 1794, lieutenant-general in June 1799, and general in April 1808. The honorary degree of M.A. was conferred on him by Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1764, and by King's College (afterwards Columbia), New York, in 1772; Oxford made him a D.C.L. 6 July 1774, and he received diplomas of LL.D. from both Yale and Dartmouth in 1803. Fanning died in Upper Seymour Street, London, on 28 Feb. 1818. He left a widow and three daughters. His only son, also an officer in the British army, died before him (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxxviii. pt. i. p. 469). His portrait by Goddard has been engraved by Reading.
[Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, ii. 406; Georgian Era, ii. 465–6; Caulkins's Hist. of New London, p. 307 n.; Onderdonk's Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and King's County, p. 172; Onderdonk's Revolutionary Incidents of Queen's County, p. 247; Onderdonk's Queen's County in Olden Times, p. 53; Oxford Graduates (1851), p. 223; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 119; Royal Kalendars; Army Lists.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.120
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 182 | i | 4 | Fanning, Edmund: for St. John in the Gulf of St. Lawrence read Prince Edward |
| 8 | for In 1799 he was chosen read He remained | ||
| 10 | omit an appointment which he retained | ||
| 15 | for 1793 read 1794 |