A Wilson Family Tree
Notes for John Edwards
"Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950", American Council of Learned Societies, 1974
(obtained from http://0-www.galenet.com.albuq.cabq.gov:80/servlet/BioRC):
John Edwards
Birth: 1748 in Virginia, United States
Death: 1837
Occupation: Planter
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Edwards, John, 1748-1837 (1748 - 1837), planter and senator, was born in Stafford County, Va., a son of Hayden and Penelope (Sanford) Edwards. He moved in 1780 to that part of Virginia which later became the state of Kentucky, where he speculated in land and got title to about 23,000 acres. This competency made him a leader in a region where the people were soon intent upon gaining statehood. The district of Kentucky was at this time divided into three counties, Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln. Edwards settled in Lincoln County, and the year following his arrival he was elected to represent it in the Virginia House of Delegates. He continued to act as a representative in 1782, 1783, 1785, and 1786. In 1783 he became a justice of the peace, which position automatically made him a member of the county court. In 1785 Bourbon County was cut out of Fayette. Edwards took up his residence in this new county, and the next year he became the clerk of the first court to be held there.
In the meantime this western part of Virginia had begun its long and tortuous course toward statehood. Edwards was a member of the two preliminary conventions held in Danville in 1785, and after the formation of Bourbon County he represented that division continuously until statehood was secured. The sinister Spanish activities in connection with the proceedings of 1787 and 1788 did not directly implicate him as they did certain other Kentuckians. In fact Edwards assumed the leadership of the opponents of the Spanish conspiracy. In the convention of November 1788, he reported and read the petition to Virginia for the independence of Kentucky, but he opposed the doctrine that Kentucky would thereby become sovereign and might enter the Union or not as she pleased. He also took part in framing the constitution of 1792.
He first served the new state by acting as one of the electors provided for by the constitution to choose the state senators. Then, in June 1792, he was appointed on a commission to choose a permanent state capital, but was not present when the decision was made giving the honor to Frankfort. As a fitting reward for his service to the district and state, he was unanimously elected one of the two first United States senators to represent Kentucky, but took no very prominent part in the deliberations of the Senate. He returned to Kentucky in 1795 never to leave the state again in an official capacity. He was immediately elected to represent Bourbon County in the state House of Representatives and thereafter, from 1796 to 1800, he was a member of the state Senate. At the latter date he retired to private life on his Bourbon plantation where he died thirty-seven years later. Ninian Edwards [q.v.], chief justice of Kentucky in 1808 and later governor of Illinois Territory, was his nephew.
-- Katharine H. Amend
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=E000075):
EDWARDS, John, a Senator from Kentucky; born in Stafford County, Va., in 1748; attended the common schools; moved to Fayette County, Ky. (then a part of Virginia), in 1780; member, Virginia house of delegates 1781-1783, 1785, 1786; delegate to the convention called to define the limits of the proposed State of Kentucky 1785-1788; member of the convention of 1792 that framed the State constitution of Kentucky; upon the admission of Kentucky as a State into the Union was elected to the United States Senate and served from June 18, 1792, to March 3, 1795; member, State house of representatives 1795; member, State senate 1796-1800; died on his plantation near Paris, Bourbon County, Ky., in 1837; interment in the family cemetery near Paris, Ky.
According to the Edwards descendants file, it is not true that he died in KY in 1837 and is buried in the family cemetery, but rather he moved to MO and lived with a female slave that he had freed, dying in 1833.
Note: Some of the information in these pages is uncertain. Please let me know of errors or omissions using the email link above. ...Mike Wilson
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