Ninian Wirt Edwards
American politician (1809–1899)
Ninian Wirt Edwards (April 15, 1809 – September 2, 1889) was an American politician and lawyer. A Whig and later a Democrat, he was a member of the Illinois General Assembly and served as Illinois Attorney General and Illinois State Superintendent.
Early life and education
Edwards was born on April 15, 1809, in Franklin County, Kentucky, the son of politician Ninian Edwards and Elvira (née Lane) Edwards. He was a brother of businessman Albert Gallatin Edwards. Through his father, he was the nephew of politician Cyrus Edwards and the grandson of politician Benjamin Edwards. He was a cousin of politicians Richard Lee Metcalfe and Theodore W. Metcalfe.
Edwards grew up between Belleville, Edwardsville, and Kaskaskia. In 1833, he graduated from Transylvania University law department. He practiced law for the following two years.
Politics
Edwards was first a Whig, then a Democrat.
“Ninian Wirt Edwards” enters the record as american politician (1809–1899). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ninian, Wirt and Edwards can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16062619. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1809, 1889 and 1833.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ninian Wirt Edwards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.